TABLE OF SPECTRA. 








THE CREATION 



EARLY DEVELOPMENTS OF 
SOCIETY 



JAMES H. CHAPIN, PH.D. 
w 

PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY, ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY 



NEW YORK 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

l82 FIFTH AVENUE 



I* 



$ l r^1 



ct' 



Copyright, 1880, by G. P. Putnam's Sons. 



MY CONGREGATION 

IN 

MERIDEN, CONNECTICUT, 

AND TO 

THE PROFESSORS AND STUDENTS IN ST. LAWRENCE 
UNIVERSITY, CANTON, N. Y., 

WHO FIRST GAVE THESE LECTURES A PATIENT HEARING, 

THIS VOLUME 

3s ftffecttonateto ^nstrifafr. 



PREFACE. 



This little work is written in no spirit of con- 
troversy. It is not an attempt to reconcile Science 
and Religion. The author does not believe there 
is any necessary conflict between them, but that 
each has a realm of its own — each is capable of 
sustaining itself — and that, clearly interpreted, each 
may contribute something to the other, without in- 
validating its own premises or subverting its own 
conclusions. 

He leaves the popular theories, therefore, to fall 
into line with each other or out of line, as the case 
may be, without any attempt to place a forced 
meaning on a word, or to draw any conclusions 
from scientific data that ascertained facts will not 
reasonably warrant. 

He desires hereby to express his obligations to 
Rev. A. G. Gaines, D.D., President of St. Lawrence 
University, for valuable criticisms ; to Rev. I. M. 
Atwood, D.D., of the Canton Theological School^ 



PREFACE. 

who kindly examined a portion of his manuscript ; 
to Profs. J. D. Dana and B. Silliman, of Yale Col- 
lege, and Prof. J. S. Newberry, of Columbia College, 
for personal favors received during the preparation 
of his book. 

He has also availed himself of the published 
writings of Rev. Thomas Hill, D.D., late President 
of Harvard University ; of Rev. F. H. Hedge, D.D., 
from whom the subject of one of these lectures is 
borrowed with the author's consent, and to Dr. 
J. W. Dawson, of McGill College, Montreal, though 
from the latter he differs somewhat widely on va- 
rious points. 

J. H. C. 

Meriden, Conn. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. PAGE 

I.— Primeval Chaos i 

II. — Light 19 

III. — The Firmament, Sea, and Dry Land 37 

IV. — Plant Life 57 

V. — Animal Life 75 

VI. — The Geological Record ^9 

VII. — Man 123 

VIII. — Problem of Civilization 147 

IX. — Failure of Primeval Society 171 

X. — Diversity of Tongues 191 

XL — Antiquity of Man 211 

XII. — Ancient Civilization in North America 243 



I. 



Primeval Chaos. 



' In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' 



: ' Not to the domes, where crumbling arch and column 
Attest the feebleness of mortal hand, 
But to that fane, most catholic and solemn, 
Which God hath planned." 

— Longfellow. 



" The tokens of a central force, 
O'erlap and move the universe ; 
The workings of the law whence springs 
The rhythmic harmony of things, 
Which shapes in earth the darkling spar, 
And orbs in heaven the morning star." 



PRIMEVAL CHAOS. 

The world exists. Whence came it, and what 
was the order in which its several parts 
appeared ? We live in the world and 

^ r stated. 

hold various relations to our fellow-men. 
How came these relations to exist, and what were 
the first steps toward the formation of society as 
it is to-day ? 

Such are the themes of our discourse in the 
Series of Lectures we now begin. 

We assume the championship of no theory 
whatever — Scientific or Religious — but propose, 
with such helps as may be at command, to trace 
out what seems the most reasonable theory of the 
origin of the world, with its marvellous harmony 
and arrangements ; and then, of the first few steps 
in the progress of human events out of which 
came social order and civil institutions. 

For the sake of simplicity we shall, 

treatment. 

as far as may be, avoid the use of merely 
technical names and terms, and employ words in 



4 THE CREATION, 

common use. When for want of a convenient 
substitute it is necessary to use terms not en- 
tirely familiar, we shall turn aside from the line 
of discussion to explain them briefly, that when 
we proceed we may go on understanding^ to- 
gether. Two or three such words occur in the 
opening lecture, and others will appear from time 
to time. 

So to our undertaking. 

Sir Isaac Newton sat one day, it is said, exam- 
ining a new artificial globe of superior design and 
workmanship, when an Atheistic friend with whom 
he had had frequent discussions entered the room, 
and after admiring the new globe asked the very 
natural question, " Who made it?" To which 
the philosopher replied, " Nobody ; it happened." 
Such an answer to such question strikes us at 
once as not only unreasonable but absurd, and 
yet it is substantially the answer the Atheist must 
give to the question, " Who made the world ? " 

We are unable to account for the existence of 
anything having manifest marks of de- 

The world . . , . " 

sign, contrivance or adaptation of means 
to ends, except on the supposition that 
it was conceived and planned by intelligence and 
wrought into shape by skill and power. 

It will hardly satisfy any exacting mind to say 
that if there are sufficient causes in existence to 



PRIMEVAL CHAOS. 5 

produce a given result, that explains the result. 
It may explain the cause, it does not explain the 
occasion for the thing itself. If, passing by a field 
where a plough stands in the furrow, we are asked 
why such an implement was made, it is not 
sufficient to say, " The force in the blacksmith's 
arm and the skill of the worker in wood caused it 
to take form." It was meant for a specific purpose 
and constructed for a definite use. 

And so our reason forces us back of the world 
to a cause beyond the world. Some p 

It is not within the range of our pres- er beyond 
ent purpose, however, to attempt to prove the world - 
the existence of a Creator; but taking that for 
granted, to inquire by and through what processes 
the world was made to assume the form and 
nature which it has. We set out, hence, with the 
assumption stated in the opening of the book of 
Genesis, that " In the beginning God created the 
heavens and the earth." 

If the earth was created, manifestly there was 
a time when it was not, and therefore a time 
when it began to be. 

We do not attempt to fix the date of this 
event, or even to guess how long since 
the work bep;an. For if we suppose it 

° x l Creation 

but six thousand years since man ap- 
peared on the earth — a supposition for which there 



6 THE CREATION. 

is no sufficient reason in Scripture or elsewhere — 
that does not help us to determine how long before 
that the process of world-making began. We can 
only say it was before all other recorded events, 
or as the Hebrew record states it, " In the begin- 
ning." 

We do not attempt to dogmatize as to the 
meaning of the word " create." It some- 

The word . 7 . 7 . - 

times means to produce absolutely, that is 

create. r y 7 

to originate — and sometimes to shape 
and set in order. In this passage it may include 
both meanings, both the originating of substance 
or material, and the shaping or setting in order, 
since, so far as we have any means of ascertaining, 
up to this time, space was tenantless and the uni. 
verse was silent ; an abysmal depth without an 
occupant. This, of course, we do not absolutely 
know, but back of that we have no record in na- 
ture or elsewhere. 

Hutton, a distinguished Scotch geologist of the 

last century, assumed that science had 

Hutton's - . , . . . . . _ , . 

theor nothing to do with the origin of things, 
that it dealt only with existing causes, 
and that, therefore, anything beyond the range of 
causes now in operation was out of the reach of 
science. And on this theory he says : " In the 
economy of the world I find no traces of a be- 
ginning, no prospect of an end." This statement 



PRIMEVAL CHAOS. 7 

is now regarded as too broad, for in the gradual 
change and wearing away of things, there is a 
prospect of an end, whatever may be said of the 
beginning. And the words already quoted give 
us our only starting-point : " In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth." 

But it must be said of this account that it 
merely states the fact, without any at- 
tempt to explain the processes involved, merely stated 
And for this there was sufficient reason. 
It was important, in a religious point of view, 
that men should be persuaded that this world was 
the work of an intelligent and powerful Creator. 
The course and method of the work were of less 
concern. The fact is stated, but there is no clue 
whatever here to the processes. 

If, now, we wish to know something of the 
processes by which the work of creation was 
wrought, we must turn to an entirely different 
field. 

What, then, has Science to tell us of the ori- 
gin of things. 

The first condition in which science _ ory ° 

science. 

assumes to recognize the world is that of 
a vast nebula, embracing all the matter now con- 
tained in the solar system ; and though it has 
been propounded, disputed, accepted, and then 
doubted again, the most reasonable and best at- 



8 THE CREATION. 

tested theory of the origin of the world, is that 
known as the nebular hypothesis. A nebula is a 
vaporous or filmy substance, more tenuous than 
the comet's tail, or the thinnest portions of the 
milky way. Tyndall not inaptly terms it "star- 
dust," and Herschell more accurately describes it 
as " an impalpable haze," as it has no more ap- 
pearance of solidity or substance than the most 
delicate or subtile cloud. 

The nebular hypothesis may be briefly indi- 
cated thus : If we sweep the heavens 

The nebular . . . i • 1 

th is w a te ^ esco P e » on anv clear night, we 
may observe nebulae at frequent inter- 
vals ; some having the appearance merely of a 
very tenuous cloud, others with a small nucleus 
at the centre, surrounded by a vaporous substance, 
denser near the centre, and thinning toward the 
edges, as if it were gradually condensing to a 
solid substance. Such bodies, larger or smaller, 
have inhabited the heavens during the whole 
period covered by history and tradition, and proba- 
bly from the beginning until now. And each of 
the solid planets, like the earth, was once a neb- 
ula. Then, as to the origin of these several 
bodies, they were at first all one. Far back in the 
remotest ages, or in the very beginning, all the 
depths of space were filled with this impalpable 
substance. By the law of gravitation, it assumed 



PRIMEVAL CHAOS. 9 

a spherical form, as any substance will whose par- 
ticles are free to move, as the tear upon the 
cheek, or the dewdrop on the grass, is round ; 
and the whole mass had a rotary or whirling 
motion, for law and energy were already operating 
upon it. That is to say, it was not a chance 
agglomeration of waste atoms, rolling through 
space on a fruitless errand ; it was the material 
of which this complete and wonderful world was 
to be constructed : it was intended for something, 
and to that end energy was put into it, and law 
controlled it from the first. 

As this vast body wheeled on through space, 
portions of its bulk became detached from time 
to time, as water flies from the surface of a wheel 
in rapid motion; or, an exterior ring became de- 
tached, as the centrifugal force overcame the cen- 
tripetal, and this ring first breaking up became 
aggregated in a single mass. And this process 
was repeated from time to time. However the 
separation may have taken place, the parts so de- 
tached not only continued the whirling or rotary 
motion, each on its own account, but received 
also an additional motion, dependent on the at- 
traction of gravitation, which sent it in a circuit 
about the central mass. And from that time 
forth it had a separate existence, was a separate 
nebula, still retaining, however, something of the 



IO THE CREATION. 

energy, and obeying the law that controlled it 
from the beginning. 

How many of these lesser bodies were de- 
tached from time to time from the cen- 

. , tral mass, or whether the process still 

nebulas. ' r 

goes on, we have no certain means of 
knowing, nor is it of any consequence in the dis- 
cussion that lies before us. 

In process of time, however, the vast central 
body, or what remained of it, shapeless and dark 
at first, became the sun that gives us light and 
heat to-day — and one of the detached portions be- 
came the solid earth on which we live. Our first 
knowledge of the earth, then, so far as science 
is able to lead us back, is that of a nebula — a 
tenuous, cloudy mass, embracing in an intensely 
heated state, all the material that have since en- 
tered into the various forms of rock and air and 
soil and sea. 

It may seem a marvellous thing that the solid 
substance of this earth could ever have 
been in the form of a cloud or vapor, 

Steam. * ' 

not only the waters and the soils, but 
even the metallic ores, the iron and the gold, and 
the almost imperishable granite, flint, and trap. 
But we need not go far to prove that such a 
thing is possible. Take a piece of ice at dead of 
winter, and few things seem harder or more un- 



PRIMEVAL CHAOS. II 

yielding ; subject it to heat, and it becomes a 
fluid, losing all its shape and hardness. Then put 
that water into the boiler of a locomotive, and 
as the train moves off, a white cloud streams 
away like a snowy banner. What is it ? We call 
it steam. It is the same substance precisely that 
was ice an hour before, but no longer solid ice, 
or liquid water, it is a vapor. If, now, instead of 
allowing the steam to be dissipated in the air we 
could collect it in a cooling vessel, as we may 
from the spout of a tea-kettle, it would become 
water again, and if subjected again to cold, would 
assume the solid form in which we found it 
when we began our experiment. And thus it is 
proven that the substance, the material is the 
same, only different in form in these three states. 
And, now, what has been so often done with 
water, may be done with most if not all sub- 
stances of which we have any knowledge. 

Matter may exist in any of these forms, solid, 
liquid, or vapor. Iron may be melted, 

, . . * r .1 i • i Three forms 

that is, changed from the solid to a 

& of matter. 

liquid state. And, as in the case of ice 

changed to water, it needs only to be more 

highly heated to become a vapor. 

And the same may be said, so far as experi- 
ment has been made, of all the materials of rock 
and ores that make up the substance of the earth. 



12 THE CREATION. 

Hence we conclude that the nebula of which the 
earth was made embraced all these materials, so dis- 
solved and attenuated by heat, there was no more 
density or apparent solidity than in the cloud that 
floats now against a summer sky. Rather unsub- 
stantial material this may seem to make a world 
of, in which mankind are to live, create industries, 
and build their monuments. But so seems the 
steam as it streams away from the locomotive, but 
which in a very short time may be ice again. 

That the earth was once heated far beyond its 
present temperature, is evident from the fact that 
many of the hardest rocks are simply cooled 
masses that were once in a state of mobility. It 
may still be seen how they boiled up and over- 
flowed, and ran out in this direction and in that, 
like heated tar, till they cooled so as to preserve 
their shape. Also, melted matter, that on cooling 
assumes the character of rock, is still thrown out 
from the interior of the earth by volcanoes, so 
that the former fluid and heated condition of the 
earth is not a mere theory, it proves itself to 
everyone who has eyes to see. 

Again, Astronomy tells us that our globe has 
_ . . the form at present, that of a sphere 

Conclusions r r 

from depressed at the poles, that would be 
,' taken by a mass in a fluent state sub- 
jected to such conditions. 



PRIMEVAL CHAOS. 1 3 

And if the earth was once heated to a molten 
state, it only required a higher heat to reduce it 
to a gaseous, that is to say, a nebulous condition. 
And, therefore, the nebular theory of the origin 
and formation of the earth, is not only every way 
reasonable, but in good degree absolutely proven. 
Indeed Prof. Guyot, ill a paper read in Septem- 
ber, 1874, before the Evangelical Alliance in New 
York, stated that it had been demonstrated in an 
exhaustive mathematical calculation, by Prof. Alex- 
ander, of Princeton. Whether finally settled or not, 
this may at present be regarded as the 
theory of science, the one that best ex- theory 
plains the known facts. 

One thing more we must notice before we pass, 
to indicate the changes that came upon this neb- 
ula in its progress toward the completion of the 
world. 

If the earth came originally from the sun, it 
must be that the material in the two are The earth 
the same; and it has been one of the andsunsimi- 

lar in compo- 

latest triumphs of science to prove this sition. 
fact — that the material of which the sun is com- 
posed, and the substance of which the earth is 
made, are one and the same, and may, therefore, 
well have come from a common laboratory. 

For a long time the sun defied all attempts to 
analyze its substance. We could survey its sur- 



14 THE CREATION. 

face, and note its movements, but what its com- 
position was, was a matter of pure conjecture. But 
the spectroscope now enables us to determine its 
substance, even more accurately than the telescope 
reveals its form and motions. 

The spectroscope is an instrument invented 
some twenty years ago, by two German 
professors at Heidelberg;.* It consists es- 

scope. * =» 

sentially of a series of prisms, and is 
used to determine the composition of a substance 
by the bright lines in its spectrum. Let us briefly 
explain. It has long been known that white light, 
as the clear light of the sun, is composed of seven 
colors — called the prismatic colors — so combined as 
to neutralize each other, producing white light. If 
a ray of sunlight be passed through a prism and 
thrown upon a screen, the colors are separated, 
and so separated are called the spectrum of the 
sun. A spectrum may also be produced by any 
other kind of light. 

It has been found further, that while a heated 
solid or liquid substance produces a con- 

. . tinuous spectrum — that is, one in which 

analysis. 1 

the colors are closely matched together 
— that a heated gas or vapor produces a broken 
spectrum — that is, consisting of bright bands or 
lines of light, separated by dark intervening spaces. 

* Professors Bunsen and Kirchoff, 1857. 



PRIMEVAL CHAOS. 15 

Of nearly seventy chemical elements* known to 
exist in nature, each produces a spectrum peculiar 
to itself, and therefore the composition of any 
substance may be determined, when reduced to a 
vapor, by the bright lines it yields in the spec- 
trum, by the number of those lines, or by the 
order of their occurrence with reference to the dark 
spaces that intervene. 

Now the sun produces all kinds of light. If, 
however, a vapor of any kind cross the path of 
the sun-ray — in other words, if the ray be made 
to pass through a gaseous substance — a dark band 
will appear in the spectrum, and in that part of 
it the color of which is produced by the like 
substance. That is the substance absorbs in one 
condition what it produces in another. 

The application of spectrum analysis to the sun, 
therefore, is on this wise. It is observed, _ 

Spectrum an- 

for instance, that burning sodium, the basis aiysis applied 
of common salt, produces a yellow flame, 
and that in the spectrum produced by such flame, 
the yellow assumes the form of a broad bright 
band in a particular position ; and that in the so- 
lar spectrum this bright band is replaced by a dark 

* Prof. J. N. Lockyer, of London, on the strength of some re- 
cent experiments, ventures the suggestion that all the elements may 
yet be found reducible to the single element Hydrogen. The theory 
lacks confirmation, and seems as yet to command little or no confi- 
dence among scientific men. 



i5 



THE CREATION. 



band of corresponding proportions. Why is this ? 
The matter is easily explained. Any element will 
absorb the kind of light it produces. If the color 
in the solar spectrum is absorbed, it must be by 
the same element that produces it. If the sodium 
band is absorbed — replaced by a dark band — it 
shows the presence of sodium in the sun. 

The same rule holds good of other substances.* 

Thallium yields a green band ; lithium a red 

band, with a thin orange one ; hydrogen 

different sub- three bands, a red, a green, and a blue 

one. And so on, each holding in every 

case its own exact position. And these all have 

their corresponding bands in the spectrum of the 

sun ; whence we are led, rather driven to the 

conclusion that all these substances exist in the 

sun, as they are known to exist in the earth. 

It is too much, as yet, to say all the elements 

Sun and found in one appear in the other, for in- 

Earthidenti- ves tipr a tion has not eone so far: the sci- 

cal in sub- ° ° 

stance. ence is comparatively new. But sufficient 
has been learned to warrant the presumption that 
the earth and sun are identical in substance, and 
without any reasonable doubt had a common origin. 
By this method of analysis we not only learn 
of what material the sun consists, but have also a 
very certain clue as to its condition. 

* See lithographic chart (frontispiece). 



PRIMEVAL CHAOS. I J 

These elements show their colors only when 
heated. We must hence conclude that 
the sun, which shows all these colors so 

the Sun 

vividly, is in a highly heated state, even 
if we had not sufficient evidence of that fact from 
the light and heat that we obtain from the sun. 
These considerations, some of which are of quite 
recent development, are regarded in the scientific 
world as practically settling the matter that the 
earth was once a nebula that came from the sun. 
What, then, must have been its appearance at this 
early date ? 

It is easy to understand that when all space 
was filled with this vaporous substance, a dense 
darkness must have been in and over all — darkness 
was on the face of the deep, or the abyss, for as 
yet there was no sun or moon or star, as they 
exist to-day ; and when the change had proceeded 
so far that both earth and sun had assumed definite 
forms and motions, even approaching a solid mass 
at centre, that still surrounded by a deep belt ot 
vapor, steam, or cloud, there w r ould be no light. 
Impenetrable darkness would hover over all, until 
by processes at first unknown, the conditions should 
be gradually modified and the original nebula pass 
upon that series of changes for which it was evi- 
dently destined, and through which it is passing 
still. We have to do in this discourse, however, 



10 THE CREATION. 

merely with the beginning — that chaos out of which 
order came. 

So let us, in closing, mark well the correspond- 
ence between the theory of Science here- 
Conclusion, in set forth and the opening sentences of 
the book of Genesis. 

The one tells us of a nebulous mass, already 
yielding obedience to the plastic touch of energy 
and law, already preparing for a grand career of 
development into forms of usefulness and beauty, 
but enveloped still in deep clouds, a desolate and 
shapeless waste, incapable as yet, of supporting life. 
The other tells us that, " In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth, and the earth 
was without form, and void ; and darkness was 
upon the face of the deep." 

The correspondence could hardly be more strik- 
ing or complete. 



II. 



Light. 



" Let there be light." 

' Hail ! holy light, offspring of heaven, first born, 
Or of the eternal co-eternal beam." 

" They say 
The solid earth whereon we tread, 
In tracts of fluent heat began." 

" God said, ' Let there be light.' 
Grim darkness felt his might, 
And fled away ; 

The startled seas and mountains cold 
Shone forth, all bright in blue and gold, 
And cried, ' 'Tis day ! 'Tis day ! ' " 



II. 

LIGHT. 

In the first lecture we collected the material of 
which to build the world, and so far as we were 
able determined its origin. 

We are to speak now of the Origin of e s " j e 
Light, with special reference to the time in 
the order of creative events at which it appeared. 

If, to dispose of that matter at once, we turn 
to the account in the book of Genesis, we find 
these words in connection with the first mention 
of the subject : " The spirit of God moved upon 
the face of the waters. And God said, 
Let there be licrht ; and there was licjht." 

& *> record. 

Again, a brief, concise statement of the 
fact, without any attempt to explain the processes 
by which it was done. It is simply that the great 
and mighty one who evoked the completed world 
from chaos, did at this point cause light to appear. 
It would not be in place here to speculate as 
to the precise meaning of the passage, " The spirit 
of God moved on the deep." The word translated 



22 THE CREATION. 

spirit is sometimes rendered breath, and some- 
times wind or breeze, so that there is opportunity 
for speculation, for such as have the time and dis- 
position. We prefer rather to regard the passage 
simply as a reverent recognition of the power and 
wisdom manifest in the changes that came by de- 
grees over the dark abysmal depth, since these 
were not fortuitous happenings that might come to 
something or might come to nothing, but the sys- 
tematic development of a plan devised and deter- 
mined before the work began, and in which, there- 
fore, every change and every movement contributed 
to the result intended from the first. And to ex- 
press this idea in brief, no words could be more fit- 
ting than these, The Spirit of God moved upon the 
chaotic deep. It was the first beating of nature's 
pulse, " the first throbbing of her mighty heart." 

Another mention is made of light farther on in 
this account. But there was reason for the wide 
separation of the two events, which will appear as 
we proceed. And with this brief statement of the 
ancient Hebrew record, we turn, as before, to an 
entirely different field of inquiry. 

What, then, has Science to teach us 
" gl "° of the origin of light and date of its 

Light. ° & 

appearance. 
First of all, let us keep in mind the substance 
with which we have to deal and of which we spoke 



LIGHT. 23 

in the preceding lecture. Chaos means confusion. 
The nebula was but a subtle vapor. As yet noth- 
ing had assumed definite form or character. There 
was the germ of worlds, but no world. There were 
the elements of water and air and light, while as 
yet there were none of these, none of the chemical 
combinations or mechanical unions so familiar to us 
now ; and the various changes in nature that we 
know so well to-day, had not begun. There was 
absolutely nothing but the dark chaotic deep. But 
while it is possible to conceive of the original nebula 
as dark — for dark as well as luminous nebulae still 
exist — we cannot suppose it continued long in abso- 
lute darkness, for one of the first effects of chemical 
action would be the production of light, though that 
light might be long obscured by overlying vapors. 

We need not concern ourselves here with the 
nature of light — whether, according to the 
older physicists it is luminous matter ra- * ure ° 

r J Light. 

diated with immense velocity from the 
light-giving body or centre, or according to the 
more recent and probable theory that it is merely 
the undulations of a universally diffused ether. 
Either theory will answer our present purpose. 

For the sake of convenience in this 
discussion we shall speak of ligdit as of „ , 

1 ° Solar Light 

two kinds, cosmic and solar; the first pro- 
duced by chemical action in the nebula itself, the 



24 THE CREATION. 

other coming from the sun. This use of the term, 
" cosmic " may be open to criticism, but we use it 
for want of a better, meaning by it just what is 
stated, light caused by the nebula of the earth it- 
self, after it was thrown off from the greater mass. 
It may, therefore, be called earth light or world 
light. While by solar light is meant that proceed- 
ing from the sun. 

And now, going back to the point at which we 
left the incipient earth in the former lecture, let us 
carefully observe what changes came about. We 
deal now with the earth nebula, leaving for the 
time, all the others out of the account. 

There is a dark nebulous mass, some two thou- 
sand times as great in diameter as the 

e e present earth, floating or wheeling its am- 

ple bulk through space. 

But as steam does not remain steam long after 
exposure to the air, but changes to a 

The nebula . r . . , 

denser form occupying so much less 

changing'. L J ° 

space, so this vast vaporous body had 
not proceeded far in its course till the outer por- 
tions began to condense, or change toward a liquid 
and then a solid form, by which operation, of 
course, the mass was being continually reduced in 
size. The heavier particles gradually gathered to- 
ward the centre, forming the nucleus possibly of a 
solid globe, while the greater part still remained, 



LIGHT. 25 

a sort of cloudy envelop about it. But while the 
steam from the locomotive may change to a mist 
that we feel upon the face, or fall like scattered 
rain-drops on the ground, leaving their imprint in 
the dust, this nebula contains not merely water 
reduced to steam, but all the elements of all the 
material that now enter into rock and soil, in the 
form of a finely attenuated gas or vapor ; and these 
are undergoing a change from their present to a 
more stable condition. The minute atoms of iron 
are uniting, forming larger particles ; the atoms of 
lime are combining, and so on through a long list. 
And as this process goes on a glow comes 
over the mass like the first faint dawnings 
of the day. The surface of the body is 

r ' lighting up. 

at white heat, and it gives forth a dim 
light. 

But as the process still goes on, the gathered 
particles change to a clear red color. The surface 
is now red-hot, and lights up all the space around, 
and the earth has the appearance of a blazing 
star. To state it more concisely, the earth nebula 
is a blazing star. 

This is what we have called cosmic light — not 
coming from the sun, but produced by the earth 
itself as it hung like a brilliant meteor in the sky. 
Something analagous to this may be easily wit- 
nessed. 



26 THE CREATION. 

Go into a blacksmith's shop, and heat a piece 

of iron as highly as can be done with a 

na ogy o common b e u ows# it comes from the fire, 

heated iron. ' 

of a whitish color, emitting an indistinct 
glow, not unlike the aurora or the dawn. Wait a 
moment, and at a different temperature it changes 
to red. It is red-hot, and will cast a glow of light 
far out into the night. Such was the change 
through which the earth nebula passed, from a 
dark, chaotic state, till it became a luminous body, 
shining with its own light. And it was by such 
means the fiat, " Let there be light," was first an- 
swered and obeyed. 

But now comes another important change. 

To extend the foregoing illustration : if you ob- 
„,, , serve the iron in the forge, from the 

The earth fe ' 

becomes brilliant and luminous condition of red 
heat, it soon changes to a dark color and 
becomes opaque, showing no light at all, any more 
than if it were cold iron, though it may still be 
somewhat hot. A similar change passed upon the 
earth ; not immediately, for the larger the body 
the longer the time required in cooling. But in 
process of time the earth became dark again ; for 
it had so far cooled, and the matter had so far 
condensed, that a thin crust had formed all around 
it, on the same principle that a slag will form on 
a pot of melted metal, though the interior may 



LIGHT. 27 

remain a long time after in a heated and even 
molten condition. A bed of fresh volcanic lava, 
also, will retain a perceptible degree of warmth 
for many years, varying according to its thickness 
and other modifying circumstances. 

Thus we trace the series of changes through 
which the earth passed ; from, first, a 
vast ball of vapor to a body of liquid or reviewed 
molten substance — emitting first the glow 
of white heat and then the light of red heat — and 
thence to a globe having a thin crust upon it, 
and so beginning to assume somewhat the ap- 
pearance and character of the modern earth. As 
the process continued and the cooling went on, 
of course the crust grew thicker by degrees and 
more substantial, and thus was it fitted at length 
for the production and maintenance of life in its 
various forms. 

We are not yet prepared, however, to follow 
the earth in its development of soils and seas and 
rocks and rivers, for there are other matters that 
must be considered before we can present an in- 
telligible view of the creation as a whole. 

We have to do in this chapter especially with 
Light. We have spoken of light as of Distinctions 
two kinds, and it is important that we an d°sob.r 
keep in mind the distinction between the Kght. 
two. That already described as Cosmic Light, not 



28 THE CREATION. 

light from a foreign body — not reflected light, but 
that produced in and by the earth itself in its 
progress from the nebula to the condition of a 
solid or encrusted globe. 

We have now to speak of the other kind of 
light, of far more practical importance as it seems 
to us to-day — Solar Light, that coming from the 
sun. 

It will readily occur to the reader, that if the 
nebula out of which the earth was made was origi- 
nally from the sun, or if all the substance of sun 
and planets was once one nebulous mass, and if, as 
has been elsewhere stated, the substance of the 
earth and sun is the same, it is reasonable to sup- 
pose the sun would pass through a series of 
changes similar to those of the earth. 

And that is even so. 

As the earth was once nebulous and dark, so 
. . . r was the sun once nebulous and dark. 

Analogies of 

sun and " Darkness was upon the face of the 

earth. ,, :, ,, t 

deep was as applicable to the sun as 
to the earth, though the passage quoted probably 
had reference only to the earth. 

The analogy between the earth and' sun may 
be traced still farther. As the earth, by the earlier 
condensation of its vapors became a glowing ball 
that shot out rays of light far into the depths of 
space, so did the sun by the same process pre- 



LIGHT. 29 

cisely. And that condition, the condition in which 
it glows by its own light and sends its rays afar, is 
the condition in which the sun exists to-day; and by 
virtue of which it supplies light and heat, to what 
without it would be a dark if not a frozen world. 

It required a much longer time for these 
chancres to pass upon the sun than upon _, 

& r r r Changes less 

the earth, for the sun is more than rapid in the 
twelve hundred thousand times larger 
than the earth ; and the time required to work im- 
portant changes bears some proportion to the bulk. 
But the great luminary passed its incipient period 
of darkness, then its dawn of white heat, and is 
now in the condition of the blazing star. 

And so it will appear that the two kinds of 
lierht, designated as cosmic and solar, are T , . 

o .' *» ' Identity of 

the same in constitution ; that is, are cosmic and 
produced from like material and in the soar lg 
same way ; by the combustion of elements that 
enter into sun and earth alike. And the two 
terms are used merely for the convenience of dis- 
tinction. The period of cosmic light for the earth 
is long since passed. It closed with the first for- 
mation of a crust upon the globe, unless we ex- 
cept the tongues of flame that for a time shot 
up here and there through the rifted envelop. 
The light on which we now depend is borrowed 
from the sun. 



30 THE CREATION. 

It must occur to the thoughtful reader at this 
point, that as these changes are slowly 
between the wrought, there must have been a consid- 
erable lapse of time between the appear- 
ance of cosmic light and that of solar light. A 
longer time was required for the sun to reach its 
highly luminous condition, by reason of its greater 
mass, to say nothing of the fact that the over- 
lying vapors of the encrusted earth, as will be 
explained in the succeeding chapter, must have 
long obscured the solar rays, or prevented the free 
access of the sunlight to the earth. 

It is worthy of particular remark that the He- 
brew record so represents it ; the one event being 
placed in the first day, the other upon the fourth. 
We have no means at command for any definite 
calculation of the period. 

We might dilate to almost any extent, did it 

come within the purpose of this discus- 
Offices of the . ,, rr f ,1 

sion, upon the omce or uses ol the sun ; 

sun. r ' 

not only as the promoter of life and 
growth and organic change, but considered as di- 
viding the light from the darkness, serving the 
purpose of a time-keeper. Without this provision 
we should have no definite and convenient measure 
of time. Without a definite chronology consecu- 
tive history would be hardly possible. And with- 
out history, transmitted experience would count 



LIGHT. 3 1 

for nothing in the economy of human life. Each 
generation would begin untutored by the past ; 
there would be little or no progress, and any high 
degree of civilization would be beyond the reach 
of man. 

The sun is not only a " luminary," but marks 
off " seasons, days, and years," and that with re- 
markable precision. He gives us now the light of 
day, and again leaves us in the darkness of the 
night. He brings, moreover, the seed-time and har- 
vest, and the various seasons of the year, accord- 
ing as he is near or far, and his heat falls upon us 
in direct or slanting rays. 

Such wonderful adaptation of means to ends, 
such accurate adjustment of the forces AJ 

J Adaptation 

that still operate in the world, and such and evident 
studious regard for the approaching needs purp 
of human life, may well command our devoutest 
admiration. For none of these offices of the sun, 
or the feebler service of the moon, seem to have 
been fortunate accidents, but essential parts of a 
complex, an elaborate, a divine economy. 

Two or three considerations, not belonging es- 
sentially to the history of the creation, but grow- 
ing out of it, claim brief attention here because of 
their bearing on the general subject. We are pro- 
ceeding on the supposition that the earth was once 
a ntbula that came from the sun ; that the sun 



32 THE CREATION. 

and earth are, therefore, of one substance or compo- 
sition ; and that the sun is undergoing changes, simi- 
lar to those that have already passed upon the earth. 
We have traced the history of the earth from 
. the condition of a dark, chaotic mass to 

Progress of 

our discus- that of a glowing orb and then a blazing 
sphere, and then to that of an encrusted 
globe shining no longer by its own but by bor- 
rowed light. 

We have traced the history of the sun from 
the same original condition, through the same series 
of changes, as far as that of the blazing orb that 
sends its light and heat afar. 

Now, since the earth has passed through these 

several changes by reason of a cooling 

, e ear „ process, the radiation of its heat into 

cooling off. r 

space, the question arises, is the earth 
gradually cooling off, so that by and by it can no 
longer support life ? 

Yes ; that is the plain and irresistible conclusion. 
Have we any proof of this, aside from the de- 
ductions of a theory ? 
Yes. It is this. 

The other planets in our system, with their 
satellites, must have had the same ori- 

Evidence 

from other gin as the earth; they have also like 

panes. mo tions ; and it is every way reasonable 

to suppose they are passing through similar changes. 



LIGHT. 33 

And observation and experiment indicate that 
the planets Saturn and Jupiter, very much larger 
than the earth, are not yet wholly freed from their 
nebulous surroundings ; whence we conclude they 
are still in a heated state. 

Moreover, since the difference in gravity is much 
less than the difference in size, it must be these 
larger planets are so much less dense, and there- 
fore so much less advanced in a geological sense 
than the earth. They are relatively "younger," 
that is, less mature than the earth. Not but that 
their origin may have been as remote, indeed more 
remote, since they are farther from the sun, but 
that their greater volume makes the longer time 
necessary to reach the same condition. 

While on the other hand our moon, very much 
smaller than the earth, is already cold, _ 

' Present con- 

through and through. A mere skeleton dition of the 
of a world, scarred with storms and gap- 
ing with craters of extinct volcanoes, but without 
any semblance of life. 

That is what the earth is coming to by and 
by ; destined not to burn up, but to freeze out. 

This may be a startling conclusion ; though, 
when we reflect how many thousands of years the 
earth has already been inhabited, and that the 
crust as yet may not exceed a hundred miles in 
thickness, and that it must thicken possibly to four 



34 THE CREATION, 

thousand miles before the internal fires are entirely 
out, it is clear there is no immediate occasion for 
alarm. 

It will appear, then, that Mr. Hutton's statement 
quoted in the preceding lecture, that " Science 
finds no prospect of an end " of this world, was 
premature. It teaches us, on the contrary, that in 
the natural order of events an end must come at 
length to the existing order of things throughout 
the material universe. But it is not of the end 
but of the beginnings of the world we are es- 
pecially to speak — the passing of this earth from 
the chaos and vacuity in which it began to a con- 
dition of order, harmony, usefulness, and life. 

And so we return from this digression to mark, 
in closing, the point in the development of our 
subject to which the present discussion carries us. 

The appearance of the sun is not yet reached 

in the regular order of events. We have 

the sun's ap- spoken of it here for the sake of unifying 

pearance. . r . . , 

our discussion of light, but the event it- 
self occurred at a later period. It was after the 
establishment of the firmament — after the gathering 
of the waters into the sea — after the first appear- 
ance of dry land probably, that the sun-light 
struggled through the vapors that surrounded the 
sun upon the one hand and shrouded the earth 
upon the other. 



LIGHT. 35 

Our present discussion takes us only to the first 
appearance of clear light, and that was 
not from the sun. The skilful chemist beHfrht^ 
will show you now how, by the combina- 
tion of certain simple elements, both light and 
heat may be produced. But this production was 
not dependent on man's invention or discovery. 
Far back in the line of ages, before there was a 
man upon the earth, aye before there was any solid 
earth or the sun in yonder heavens had begun to 
shine, the principle we now call chemical affinity, 
with gravitation and various forms of energy, were 
created and set at work ; and out of the diffused 
and attenuated material that swung in chaos and 
disorder and black night, were gathering and as- 
sorting and combining the elements in due har- 
mony and proportion. And in compliance with the 
divine plan, and in obedience to the fiat of the 
Eternal, " Let there be light," there was light. 



III. 

The Firmament, 
The Sea and Dry Land. 



" And God made the firmament, and divided the waters that 
were under the firmament from the waters which were above the 
firmament." 

" The mountains huge appear 
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave 
Into the clouds, their tops ascend the sky. 
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low 
Down sunk a hollow bottom, broad and deep, 
Capacious bed of waters." 



III. 



THE FIRMAMENT, AND THE GATHERING 
OF THE WATERS. 

We are now to speak of the establishment of 
the firmament, the gathering of the waters 
into the sea, and the first appearance of e * u ** 
dry land. These events were next in 
order after the first formation of a crust upon the 
earth. It was the point, to all seeming, at which 
order began to reign. 

The period of dark chaos was long past. The 
brooding spirit had evoked light from the 
gradually condensing nebula, and then . 
the blazing star had given place to an 
opaque body bearing some resemblance to the earth 
as it exists to-day. 

By these several changes the earth was gradu- 
ally approaching the condition for which it was 
evidently intended from the first. There were no 
accidents, no mere fortunate happenings. They 
were parts, each in place, of the plan of the master 
mind that was over and in it all. And the forces, 



40 THE CREATION. 

operating then and operating now, which we call 
electricity, gravitation, and the like, were of his 
creation and his appointment, and the obedient ser- 
vants of his will. 

After the breaking up of the original nebula 
into the several parts that now constitute 

The inter- 
spaces the solar system, must have come a period 

extended. r . , .. -^ . r , 

of gradual separation. Even if we make 
no account of the force with which the parts were 
thrown off, but suppose each disjoined fragment, in 
turn, to have lain immediately without the slowly 
shrinking central nebula, there must have been 
gradually widening spaces between the parts suc- 
cessively thrown off. The centre of the earth from 
the centre of the sun is, in round numbers, ninety- 
three million miles. Mercury, thrown off later, lies 
at a less distance, while Jupiter, thrown off much 
earlier, is at a much greater distance. 

As these separated nebulae condensed, or 
changed to a more compact form by the opera- 
tion of gravity and radiation, the distances be- 
tween them were increased, and so each planet 
came to have a space of its own in which to spin 
its daily round and make its annual revolution. 
These intervening spaces would seem thus to have 
been left unoccupied by any visible substance, 
making a vast expanse between sun and planet, 
and between one planet and another. 



THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 4 1 

And here we approach what seems to have 
been in the mind of the writer in Gene- 
sis, when he penned the following words: Th ^ recordm 

x ° Genesis. 

" And God made the firmament, and di- 
vided the waters that were under the firmament 
from the waters that were above the firmament." 

The word here translated "firmament" is from 
a verb that is said to mean primarily to 
" hammer out," or extend, as metal may . e 

J firmcDnent. 

be drawn out into a thin sheet, and 
alludes to the overarched and transparent appear- 
ance of the sky. But the word is also rendered 
" expanse " and sometimes " heavens," which 
means simply " heaved up." Neither of these 
words, as we use them, has a very definite mean- 
ing. We speak of the birds flying through the 
heavens, of the clouds floating in the heavens, and 
of the stars that fill the heavens. Of course there 
is no correspondence, actual or implied, between 
the height attained by the birds, the clouds, and 
the stars. And the word expanse is scarcely more 
definite, since it means merely an open space. 

But if we substitute the word " expanse," in 
the passage quoted, for firmament, we shall get 
the idea more near the literal fact. For there is 
a separation of the water-producing cloud from the 
water-embracing sea, by the expanse of the atmos- 
phere between. 



42 THE CREATION, 

But let us trace the process carefully from the 
time evaporation first began till the sep- 
t 6 raced eSS arat ion was complete. For that purpose 
we go back to the condition of the earth 
as we left it in the preceding lecture. It had just 
passed through the " ordeal by fire." From a blaz- 
ing meteor in the sky it had so far cooled as to 
assume a nearly opaque form with a thin crust 
surrounding it for the first time. But the heat 
within was still so great that the crust was seamed 
and rent at a thousand points, whence issued jets 
of steam and tongues of flame, and sometimes 
streams of liquid matter. 

In consequence, the atmosphere, or the region 
about the earth now occupied by the atmosphere, 
was full of various vapors. The waters when 
formed could not remain water, for the great 
heat immediately reduced them to steam. The 
steam went aloft, formed into clouds — fell in tor- 
rents of rain upon the hissing hot surface only to 
be immediately revaporized and rise again in a 
continual round ; and thus the earth lay imbedded 
in a sort of perpetual London fog. 

But as the process continued and the crust 
grew firmer, the outbreaks from within became less 
frequent. And the crust gradually thickening and 
cooling, the revaporizing became less general. The 
waters falling in rain found here and there a spot 



THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 43 

cool enough to remain upon, and thus by degrees 
the atmosphere was cleared of vapors. The clouds 
rose above, the seas settled beneath, and iii pro- 
cess of time, the waters that were above the ex- 
panse were separated from the waters that were 
under the expanse. 

We should here recall the fact, which has 
before been stated, that the earth neb- 
ula contained all the material since gath- the^ebui^ 
ered into the various forms that nature 
assumes in rock and soil and sea. And while the 
process just described was going on, the heavier 
substances tended to sink and gather toward the 
centre, or at least to remain within the crust or 
flow over the surface in volcanic vents, while the 
more volatile substances, including the various 
gases with which we are familiar to-day, rose and 
mingled in the vaporous surroundings. 

And we shall find, as we proceed with our dis- 
cussion, that an important consideration 

The atmos- 

in the preparation of the earth was the p here clear- 
clearing of the atmosphere of these nox- mSm 
ious vapors. Open a gas-jet in your room ; the 
gas mingles with the air, without changing its ap- 
pearance to the eye, but so far changing its char- 
acter as to make it first offensive to the smell, 
and then oppressive to the lungs. Now, this early 
atmosphere, that which enveloped the forming 



44 THE CREATION. 

earth, must have been full of such poisonous 
gases ; for they existed, had not yet been ab- 
sorbed or compacted into solid material, and by 
reason of their volatility must have mingled freely 
with the air. Besides, we find the atmosphere 
about the craters of volcanoes of this noxious and 
oppressive character to-day as much perhaps as it 
ever was. 

There was another end to be gained by this 
clearing of the atmosphere, first of mists and 
then of volcanic vapors, besides the dividing of 
the waters that were above from those that were 
beneath. 

The world was being prepared for the abode of 
_, . life. As yet no form of life could exist 

The earth J 

preparing upon the earth, by reason, first of the 
heat, and second of the poisonous air. 
But the way was preparing, for to that end was 
the world created. Not merely as a wonderful ex- 
periment with nebulous matter, but for the abode 
and happiness of man. Toward this result had all 
the energies involved in the creation been mani- 
festly working from the first. And, certainly, 
nothing in the whole progress of events went 
farther to fit the earth for the maintenance of 
life, than the establishment of a clear atmos- 
phere between the clouds above and the seas 
beneath. 



THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 45 

We pass now to a consideration of the second 
topic embraced in the subject of the lee- . . 

ture : the gathering of the waters into of sea and 
the sea and the consequent appearing of ry ian 
dry land. 

After the clearing of the expanse about the 
earth, it seems, to our common conception, to have 
assumed at once a more definite and independent 
character than it had ever had before. It now had 
the appearance for the first time of a solid globe 
swinging in open space. - But it must be kept in 
mind that the crust as yet was comparatively 
thin, and liable to rupture at frequent intervals 
by the operation of the giant forces as yet un- 
tamed within. Geologists sometimes speak of the 
earth as passing through an " ordeal by fire," as 
described in the last lecture, and then through an 
" ordeal by water." 

The latter came about in this way. 

When the crust had so far cooled as to per- 
mit water to lie upon it, without being 
immediately converted into steam, the by w ^ r> 
waters that now constitute the sea must 
have covered the whole surface of the earth. For 
the surface, as yet, was comparatively smooth, and 
there was no cause for the water to stand in one 
place or flow in one direction rather than in 
another. There was, therefore, no dry land. All 



46 THE CREATION. 

was sea. But this was not to continue. The im- 
prisoned forces kept in action by the heat within 
the crust, here and there broke their bounds, burst 
through to the surface. And as the volcanic mat- 
ter ran out, the water very likely ran in, causing 
great explosions. We have an example of the 
kind in comparatively recent history. 

A submarine volcano broke out in the bed of 
the Mediterranean Sea, not far from 
Mount ^Etna, and for a time there was a 

ruptures. 

lively contest between the fires within 
and the waters without. But the sea seemed to 
have most resources at command and quenched at 
length the volcanic flames. 

But these explosions in the early crust were 
to work important changes in the surface of the 
earth; changes that in modified form and degree 
are still going on. 

Around the opening formed in the crust the 
exuded material gathered till it rose quite above 
the general level, as some volcanoes do at the 
present day. Mount Vesuvius is little, if anything, 
more than an accumulation of material ejected 
from the interior through its own crater ; a refuse 
heap of volcanic matter. 

Besides, water was working in another way than 
that of merely irritating or antagonizing the vol- 
canic forces. 



THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 47 

The seas, which at this time covered the whole 
surface of the globe, loaded with corro- _ 

° Corrosive 

sive acids, began at once to eat into and action 
grind away the crust. 

And the waters as they flowed, bore along the 
fine dust thus formed till it lodged 
against the incipient mountain about the r °' >n 4 y 

& r currents. 

volcanic rim, or some other obstruction 
that presented itself, and there settled as a fine 
mud ; and warmed by the crust beneath, and 
pressed down by the "weight of waters above, grad- 
ually hardened, till it became a part of the rock 
or crust again. This was the beginning of sedi- 
mentary rocks, that now form much the greater 
portion of the rocks open to the investigation of 
the geologist. 

And as this operation was continually repeated 
— the acids continually corroding the surface, and 
the sea continually wearing it away, and the 
w r aters continually carrying the loose and fine ma- 
terial till it found a lodgment — the surface was 
steadily growing more and more uneven. 

We may suppose that wherever there was a vol- 
canic vent made by the imprisoned forces, with the 
outflow cooling round it and the sweepings of the 
ocean heaped upon it, or against it, there was the 
beginning of a hill or mountain that might rise to 
considerable height or spread over a wide extent, 



48 THE CREATION. 

according to the time occupied and the energy with 
which the forces operated. 

But it was not in this way that the principal 

inequalities were made on the surface of 

modifying the earth. The highest mountains are 

not made up of volcanic matter ejected 

from vents within themselves, much less are great 

mountain chains of this specific character. In 

other words volcanoes are not the chief mountain 

builders. — We must seek some other explanation. 

And fortunately it is not hard to find. 

As the crust thickened, and so opposed a 
greater resistance to the action of the internal 
heat, the outbreaks became less frequent ; but the 
seething, boiling sea of liquid fire within was 
active and potent as ever, and sometimes oper- 
ated with such tremendous energy, that while not 
breaking through, it caused a grand uplift of a 
wide area of the surface. And as we may readily 
understand, if there was an elevation of the crust 
in one place, there would be a corresponding de- 
pression or subsidence in another, usually in the 
immediate vicinity. And in this way the " high 
places and low places of the earth " were formed. 
The waters, which till now had spread the whole 
surface over, gathered by their own weight into 
the " low places " and formed the seas, and the 
dry land appeared. 



THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 49 

That this theory of the elevation and subsi- 
dence of portions of the earth's crust is not mere 
theory is sufficiently proven by the fact that the 
same operation is going on, to a limited extent, to- 
day. 

At the old town of Pozzuoli, on the shore of 
the Bay of Naples, a few miles distant „ 

J r Temple 

only from Mount Vesuvius, stand sev- of Jupiter 
eral marble columns on a marble pave- 
ment of what was once a pagan temple, built 
probably before the time of Christ. The temple 
was built on dry land ; but the floor or pavement 
is now nine feet under the water of the Mediter- 
ranean Sea. Moreover, the columns show by marks 
upon them, that they have been submerged to the 
height of twenty-three feet. Whence we infer that 
the land there subsided or sank to that depth and 
has since risen again. Indeed it is apparent within 
the past seven years that there is still an upward 
movement, and it is by no means improbable that 
it may by and by, regain its former level. Such 
oscillations, or alternate elevations and subsidences 
are by no means rare or unfrequent in volcanic 
regions. And such movements, on a larger scale, 
are perceptible on some continental borders, though 
the rate of progress is usually very slow. We 
mark this, then, as one of the efficient causes of 
diversities in the surface of the earth. 



50 THE CREATION. 

Since we touch here upon it we may as well 
dispose at once of the subject of moun- 

Mountain , . , . ,. - . ... 

making. tain making, or of the vast inequalities 
of surface between the mountain tops and 
the bottom of the sea. 

' When the crust first formed upon the earth, it 
was a larger body than after the condensation had 
proceeded farther, and many of the gases had es- 
caped or entered into solid forms ; and therefore 
the crust was larger at first, and afterward shrunk 
to meet the changed requirements of the case. By 
this shrinking the crust or envelop became wrin- 
kled ; sunk here into a deep trough, and rose there 
in a huge fold that we call a mountain chain. 

A roast apple as it comes from the oven is 
plump and smooth, but as it cools the inside 
shrinks and the skin is wrinkled. A very similar 
operation occurred in the earth as it changed from 
a highly heated state to a condition in which the 
crust, at least, was cool. And mountain ranges are 
often nothing more nor less than folds in the crust, 
wrinkles on the surface of the earth. 

If this cause seems inadequate to produce such 
effects, we have only to consider the height of 
mountains in comparison with the diameter of the 
earth. The highest mountains rise less than six 
miles above the level of the sea. The diameter of 
the earth is, in round numbers, eight thousand 



THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 5 I 

miles. Upon an artificial globe two feet in diame- 
ter a corresponding elevation would not exceed the 
thickness of common writing-paper. 

Another cause of mountain making, of which 
some authors make much account, is due 

Folding by 

to the gradual accumulation of material lateral pres- 
along a certain line or trough till the 
pressure becomes so great as to rupture the crust, 
when the surface layers are squeezed together with 
such tremendous force as to cause them to assume 
a crumpled and folded position. Such is supposed 
to have been the origin of that portion of the Ap- 
palachian chain which includes the coal measures 
of Pennsylvania. 

Here our discussion might properly end. 

But since we refer from time to time to the 
Hebrew record in the book of Genesis, The term 
and note points of correspondence be- " y . ln * e 

r r Hebrew rec- 

tween that and the theory we are de- ord. 
veloping from independent sources, we may fairly 
be required to offer some reasonable interpretation 
of the oft-recurring word " day," which we find in 
the passage, " The evening and the morning were 
the first day," or, as it is more accurately rendered, 
" There was evening, there was morning, day one," 
and the half-dozen passages of like import that 
occur in this primeval account of the creation. 
No other word in the whole account has been 



52 THE CREATION. 

so much discussed, both by those who assert and 
those who deny the authenticity and value of the 
record. 

The most obvious interpretation is, that it is a 
period of twenty-four hours — a solar day. 

But the term is used without modification, in at 
least three different senses in this account : to indi- 
cate light as distinguished from darkness, without 
any reference to duration ; then in the passages 
above named, and again to indicate the whole 
period of the creation. By no amount of ingeni- 
ous construction can these three terms be inter- 
preted alike. We must seek some other expla- 
nation. 

No competent critic now, so far as we know, 
regards the term day in the recurring passages as 
representing a solar day, a period of twenty-four 
hours. There is nothing analogous in the actual 
work of the creation ; besides, three days are re- 
corded before the appearance of the sun, which 
alone measures and makes a solar day. 

The attempt to correlate the "days" with cer- 
tain periods of rock formations, as the Silurian, the 
Devonian, and so on, is equally futile, for there is 
no evidence in the rocks that there was any cor- 
respondence in point of time between these differ- 
ent formations. It is impracticable, then, to assign 
any definite limit to the term day in the Hebrew 



THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 53 

record, since it represents no exact or assignable 
duration. 

What, then, may it be supposed to represent ? 
Let us seek that which best explains the facts. 

Premising that the passage, " There was even- 
ing, there was morning, day one," and 
the corresponding sentences, constitute Froi ; Pierce ' s 

r & theory. 

merely a poetical refrain, closing the 
successive measures of the half-rhythmic account, 
Prof. Benjamin Pierce, some years ago, suggested 
an interpretation which has the merit of some- 
thing more than ingenious novelty, though it may 
not precisely represent the primary meaning of the 
writer. 

The theory is elaborated with some detail by 
Dr. Thomas Hill, in his " Natural Sources of The- 
ology," namely, that the term is not a measure 
of time or space at all, but that the six days are 
" logical divisions in the survey of the universe," 
the logical order of thought in the mind of the 
author of the account. As if it were written " In 
the first place there was light ; in the second place 
a firmament, with uplifted mountains and depressed 
ocean basins ; in the next place plants appeared, 
and then the sun," and so on, following the record 
through to the end. 

Viewed in this light, says Dr. Hill, "all the 
work of Ritter and Guyot, all the arguments of the 



54 THE CREATION. 

Bridgewater Treatises and the Graham Lectures 
are thus foretold in these brief sentences." 

We go farther than Dr. Hill, and say the 
account not only sets forth the logical order of 
thought, but approximately the actual order of 
events.* Let us see. 

I. The elements in chaotic darkness and con- 
fusion, followed by light resulting from 

Comparison . . . 

of data. chemical action. 

2. The separation of the earth and 
heavens by an intervening firmament, together with 
the upheaval of mountains and corresponding de- 
pression of ocean beds. 

3. The appearance of life in the form of vegeta- 
tion, as will appear in the next lecture. 

4. Appearance of the sun. If the theory devel- 
oped in the second lecture be correct, this occurred 
at a somewhat advanced stage of the work. There 
was an extended lapse between the appearance of 
cosmic and solar light, though we have no means 
of calculating the actual or even probable length 
of the period. 

5. Appearance of the animal world. 

6. The appearance of man — and 

7. If you please, rest from the work of creat- 
ing: no additions having been made to the forms 

* Dr. Hill regards this as one of the secondary meanings that may 
be found in the record in Genesis. It seems to us primary. 



THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 55 

of life since the introduction of man. There is no 
intimation here of weariness, or exhausted power 
as some inconsiderately assume. The Supreme 
Spirit may be as active in guiding and preserving 
what he created as he was in the act of creating. 
The meaning is, simply, that at this point he 
ceased to introduce new types of life. 

In what is usually called a second account of 
the creation, beginning at the fourth verse of the 
second chapter, the order of the first is reversed ; 
that is to say, the order of time is not ob- 
served. The writer begins with man as the crown 
of the creation, and proceeds, in order, to those 
of less importance. 

The reader is left to consider all the facts, to- 
gether with the suggestions offered, and reach his 
own conclusion. 

We return now from this digression, to mark, 
in closing, the point we reach in the de- 
velopment of OUr Subject. We began Conclusion. 

with the earth as it emerged from the 
ordeal by fire to have a thin crust about it, but 
shrouded still in a bed of fog and noxious gases. 
We have traced its progress as the vaporous sur- 
roundings gradually cleared, and a wide expanse 
separated the clouds that were above from the 
seas that were beneath. We have traced it, also, 
as the crust thickened and volcanic vents gave rise 



56 THE CREATION. 

to hills and mountains, here and there. And then, 
as the crust stiffened and grew stronger, so that it 
was not easily broken, the imprisoned forces, like 
raging, struggling giants, heaved it into huge folds 
here and depressed it into deep basins there, till 
the seas gathered into the deep places of the earth, 
and "the dry land appeared." 



IV. 

Plant Life. 



" Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and 
the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself." 

" And then 
The vacant hills did throb with life ; ai d 
The waiting fields put on parti-colored robes, 
As for a bridal day." 



IV. 

THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 

We are to speak now of the world of plants. 

In the preceding lectures we traced the devel- 
opment of the earth from the nebula, through the 
ordeal by fire, and the ordeal by water, till it as- 
sumed the character of a solid globe, or a globe 
with solid crust upon it, with continents outlined 
and seas confined within certain bounds ; that is, 
through the inorganic and lifeless period. 

As yet nothing had an organic form or con- 
stitution. There is no organism in the ^ u . 

° The mor- 

cloud or nebula. It may change form at ganic period 
any moment, and be still a cloud or 
nebula. There are no organic parts in the lava- 
bed or in the rocks that result from its cooling. 
A rock may be broken into fragments and each 
fragment be still a rock. And so in the creation, 
as far as we have traced it, nothing existed with 
organs and parts arranged in due order and pro- 
portion and for specific functions. 

We come now to the organic period, when 



60 THE CREATION. 

matter was organized for the introduction and sus- 
tenance of life. Organism implies life, and 
The organic w i t h ou t organism there can be no life. 

period. ° 

But before proceeding to that it will 
be expedient to notice certain changes that came 
over the " dry land " after it became dry, before it 
could support life. 

The continent, as it emerged from the water, 

through diversities in the surface, was 
processes of little more than a cinder, or at most a 

volcanic or igneous rock, somewhat like 
our trap-rock, but more like the beds of lava now 
found dried and hard on the sides of our volcanoes. 
Of course nothing could grow, take root, or find 
nourishment in this. But nature spends no idle 
moments, and the agencies of change were quickly 
at their work. There were the acids in the rain 
and in the air, so much more abundant than at 
present, as has been explained before, all tending 
to corrode the surface, which under the beatings 
of the storm and the continual agitation of the 
elements soon began to soften and crumble. The 
same process in a modified form may be witnessed 
to-day in the little vineyards and gardens of the 
peasants on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, where 
the lava-bed is no sooner cooled than it begins to 
fray and the surface to disintegrate till a soil is 
formed in which the vine will take root and grow. 



PLANT LIFE. 6 1 

Much of the material thus loosened, or set free, 
was borne off by the winds, or swept down by the 
floods and deposited at the bottom of the sea, 
to form the earliest bed of sedimentary rock, or 
possibly, by refluent wave, to be spread upon the 
beach again. But from these several causes there 
was a gradual accumulation of this material upon 
the land, which absorbing the moisture and dis- 
tilling the subtle gases, at length formed beds of 
soil in preparation for the seeds and plants that 
were next in the order of creation. 

And now, the earth being clothed with soil 
brings us to the first introduction of life upon it. 

Whence came it ? 

There is nothing more certain than that there 
was a time when there was no life upon T ., . ... 

1 Life in dif- 

the earth. Equally certain is it that the ferent tem- 
earth is full of life to-day. We do not peraures * 
as yet know through what range of temperature 
some form of life may exist. Some plants will 
grow in water raised almost to the boiling point, 
while there is a minute fungus that flourishes amid 
polar snows, where the temperature is rarely above 
the freezing point. And still it is a conceded im- 
possibility for life to have existed in the nebula, 
or in the molten condition of the earth preceding 
the formation of a crust. 

Of the origin of life upon the earth, then, what 



62 THE CREATION. 

shall we say ? The more general answer will be in 

substance this ; that at this juncture in 

"Se ° ^ e P r °g ress °f the world, the Creator, 

of his own purpose, in accordance with 

his own plan, and by his Almighty power, created 

the plants ; that is, the germs out of which they 

severally grew. 

It has been suggested by Mr. Darwin, whose 

name and services entitle his opinion to 

theory. much respect, that only a few germs were 

necessary to begin with, and after that, 

by the operation of natural causes, the growth went 

on from one form of life to another. 

But it matters really very little which view we 
take. Whether the original germs were few or 
many ; whether placed in nature at one time or at 
different times, the absolute necessity for a first 
cause — a creator — lies back of it as much in one 
case as in the other. The question is not hotv 
many germs, or at what time ; but whence came 
they — by whose appointment, and by what power? 
And even if we venture on the bold suggestion 
of Tyndall, in his famous Belfast address, 
suggestion, ky which the equanimity of so many well- 
meaning people was disturbed, that " in 
matter he found the promise and potency of every 
form and quality of life," it yet remains to be ex- 
plained how this potency came there ? Who put 



PLANT LIFE. 63 

into matter the promise and potency of life? As 
the same author says on another occasion, " Granted 
the nebula and its potential life, the question 
whence came they remains to baffle and bewilder 
us." 

This subject will be more fully considered in a 
subsequent lecture. For the present we content 
ourselves with the conclusions of some of the lead- 
ing authorities in the scientific world, and those 
from whom a different verdict might have been 
expected, if one were tenable, that the origin of 
life from matter, by any inherent cause, is " con- 
trary to experience and observation," and " against 
all the analogy of current nature." 

We must look beyond nature, then, for the ori- 
gin of life. m 

The cause 

If before proceeding farther we turn to beyond na- 
the book of Genesis for such light as it 
may give, we read, " And God said, let the earth 
bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, 

,, ,- . -ii- r r i- The Hebrew 

and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his reC ord. 
kind, whose seed is in itself. And it was 
so." Let us briefly analyze this simple statement. 
The term grass, as it occurs in ancient documents is 
not so specific as with us to-day, but is a general 
term for the simpler forms of vegetable life, or for 
a new and tender growth of any kind of plants. 
The word corn was once used in a similar way, 



64 THE CREATION. 

and the usage is not yet obsolete — to indicate all 
kinds of grain. The sons of Jacob went down to 
Egypt to buy corn, when as yet the kind of grain 
now so designated was probably unknown. 

With this distinction in mind we need be at 
no loss for a clear interpretation of the passage. 

And now let us observe the very nice distinc- 
tions made in this first paragraph relating to life — 
and we are sure of none more ancient in all litera- 
ture — between the organic and the inorganic world, 
and also between the different types of plants. 
" And the earth brought forth grass, and herb 
yielding seed." There is no seed in the rock or 
the gas, the nebula or the lava-bed, that you can 
plant and raise the like from. These belong to 
the inorganic world. But when matter was organ- 
ized in the herb, then a seed was produced, which 
being planted yields the like again. Further :" And 
the tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed 
is in itself." The seed of the fruit-tree is in the 
fruit, and being planted will produce a tree of the 
same kind as that on which it grew. Such is the 
brief and simple, yet very comprehensive story. 

What, now, may we learn of plant life from 
other sources ? 

The botanist will give us a far more elaborate 
statement, with a much longer list of plants, with 
their divisions and subdivisions. He will tell us of 



PLANT LIFE. 65 

the cryptogams and phaenogams, of the acrogens 
and exogens, of the angiosperms and 
gymnosperms, all of which terms have . . 

oy r analysis. 

definite significations, and a place in any 
concise and complete history of plants. But we 
need not enter into all this detail. We require 
only a simple statement of the most obvious char- 
acteristics of plants, with such distinctions as will 
appear to the casual observer who may not be 
skilled in scientific lore. 

First, a general division may be made into 
flowerless and flowering plants ; a distinction that is 
easily marked at certain stages of growth. But 
that is hardly specific enough for our purpose. 
The following is more satisfactory, and for our 
use sufficiently exact, though the skilled botanist 
would require more detail. 

Plants may be divided into three general 
classes, having special reference to their modes of 
growth. 

First. Acrogens, sometimes though not very 
accurately styled "top-growers."* 

Second. Endogens, distinguished as " inside 
growers." 

Third. Exogens, or " outside growers." 

* For the sake of simplicity and to avoid multiplying terms all 
the flowerless plants are here included under the single head of 
Acrogens. 



66 THE CREATION. 

The first class is of the simplest structure, 
with tissue chiefly cellular, and includes 
Acrogens. the sea-weeds, the mosses, the ferns, 
ground pines, and the like. These have 
generally an upward growth, flourish best in 
swampy and retired places, and seem to shun 
rather than seek the day, as if the sunlight were 
an intrusion upon their secluded existence. More- 
over, they produce no seeds — only a spore, that is, 
a simple cellule, without the store of albumen and 
starch around it that makes up the perfect seed. 
The Endogens, " inside growers," are so called 
because their growth is wholly on the in- 
Endogens. side. They have no proper bark, distinct 
from the interior structure, and increase 
in size by pushing out the outer layers as addi- 
tions of nutriment are made within. If we cut 
one of the plants across we shall find it is made 
up of a great number of separate fibres, imbedded 
in a sort of spongy substance, but with no indica- 
tion of its term of growth. Familiar examples are 
the corn, rattan, and palm, the wayside weed and 
flowering garden plants. These differ from the 
first class not only in structure and mode of 
growth, but have distinctly-formed seeds. They 
are the " herbs bearing seeds." 

The Exogens, or " outside growers," are so 
called because the additions in growth are made 



PLANT LIFE. 6j 

each season on the outside of* the wood and. im- 
mediately under the bark. If we take a 
transverse section of one of these, freshly Exogens. 
cut, we shall be able to distinguish the 
divisions in the woody fibre which indicate succes- 
sive years of growth, and thus to approximate at 
least, the age of the plant. Familiar examples of 
this class are the oak, apple, pine, and most fruit 
and nut-growing trees. 

What, now, of the order of succession in which 
these several classes of plants appeared? 

It would be most natural to look first for 
those of simplest structure, the plan of 
nature almost uniformly being from the order 
simple to the more complex. We 
should expect, then, first to find the Acrogens. 
The Exogen is accounted the highest type of 
plant. If, then, the Endogen is the intermediate, 
we should expect that to appear second in the 
order of time. It is not yet definitely settled, 
however, that it did so appear. The Exogen 
seems to have come as early, if not before it. 

But as the existence of Exogens implies a 
warm succeeded by a cold season — a 
time of growth succeeded by a time of e^^S™ 
comparative inaction — we may reasonably 
suppose, if the year was so divided so long ago, 
that the Endogens growing in summer may have 



68 THE CREATION. 

perished in the winter. Many of them are annual 
plants to-day. The growth of one year decays and 
disappears, and is succeeded the following season 
by an entire new growth. Therefore, the non-ap- 
pearance of traces of Endogens in the earlier ages 
does not of necessity imply their non-existence at 
the time. We can only say, in such case, the 
record may not be complete. 

But what are the indications from such record 
as we have? How are we to decide which type of 
plants came first, or if all appeared simultaneously? 

Let us see. 

In the various beds of rock built up on the 
earth's crust, since the dry land first ap- 
ofthefosslfs P eare( ^ and began to crumble and wash 
away into the sea to be there pressed 
and hardened into rocks, are found fossils — that is, 
remains of plants and animals that have lived and 
died. Sometimes it is a bone, sometimes a shell, 
and again a stem or leaf; sometimes with natural 
form still complete, but with substance assimilated 
to that of the rock ; and again only an impres- 
sion of its form remains. 

In whatever stratum they are found geologists 
are in the habit of saying, " This plant, or this 
animal, lived and died when this rock was form- 
ing. When dead, it was swept by some current of 
wind or water into the bed of silt or sand then 



PLANT LIFE. 69 

gathering at the bottom of the sea, lake, or river ; 
that mud or sand, when in process of time it 
became rock, was its tomb ; and when later the 
rock was unearthed and broken, the fossil appeared 
to give us hints of the types of life that existed 
on the earth so long ago." 

Now, the fossil plants found earliest, or at the 
remotest period from the present, in the 
rocks, are all of the first or lowest class plants, Marine 
of plants, so far as it is possible to dis- cr °g ens 
tinguish them, and chiefly if not wholly of the 
character of marine algce, or sea-weeds. And it is 
quite certain that the earliest life of both plants 
and animals was in the sea. 

The plants of simplest structure, and which we 
have designated as " top-growers," came first, in 
accordance with the theory above laid down. 
Then we must pass through a considerable depth 
of rock, coming toward the surface and represent- 
ing, of course, a vast period of time, before we 
can certainly identify a single specimen of the 
higher types of plants. 

The Acrogens increased in numbers, variety, and 
size with each succeeding age, covering Culmination 
the land at length and encroaching on of 

, • , ■ ,, . r , . Acrogens. 

the shallow margins of the sea. Among 
the ferns, of which a few species now crouch tim- 
idly in shady nooks, were those of great size and 



70 THE CREATION. 

almost numberless varieties, and the club mosses 
attained the dimensions of forest trees. There 
were giants in those days in the world of plants, i 
In the coal period, the wide reaches of swampy- 
land — for there were as yet few high 
plants. lands — were covered with a deep, profuse, 
and tangled growth of stalwart plants 
chiefly of the first class, Acrogens. And it is to 
the vast accumulation of these, under long-con- 
tinued heat and pressure, that we are indebted for 
the coal beds for which we now find so abundant 
use. The coal fields were stocked against a time 
of need ; when the forests should fail in part and 
man be compelled to look elsewhere for material 
to keep his fires burning. 

It has before been stated that at this early 
_ ,. . period the atmosphere was full of nox- 

Condition *■ l 

of the early ious gases. According to Prof. Tyndall, 

atmosphere. ...... 

the air was so saturated with carbonic 
acid, that it obstructed radiation from the earth al- 
most as effectually as a glass roof: the earth thus 
became a sort of conservatory or hot-house, and 
therefore plants grew to enormous size. But if this 
was the cause of the large • growth of plants, it is 
evident that as the atmosphere cleared of this acid 
the plants must have appeared of reduced size. 
Not only so, but a radical change occurred in the 
character of the plant world. To the Acrogens 



PLANT LIFE. J I 

were clearly added Endogens and Exogens, both 
of which were unknown in the earlier ages. 

The change was not abrupt, but gradual — some 
types of exogenous plants appearing as . 

/r & r rr & Appearance 

far back as the coal period, or possibly of the higher 
the Devonian age; but it was not till P ans - 
comparatively recent times that the " outside 
growers," the oak, the elm, hickory, and the like 
became the chief features of the landscape. 

And so it appears, as far as the fossils enable 
us to decide, that the order of occurrence of the 
different classes of plants, were, first, those of sim- 
plest structure, flowerless and seedless; second, those 
producing flower and seed, and lastly, the fruit and 
nut-growing trees. In other words the testimony 
of the rocks bears out the theory suggested above, 
that the order of appearance of the different types 
of plants was from the lowest type and simplest 
structure to the higher and more complex. 

We thus reach the conclusion of our topic 
proper. But one or two questions may arise 
which it will be well to answer lest they leave us 
in some confusion. 

It has been said that the earlier plants rather 
shun than seek the sunlight. And if our Relation of 
theory of the gradual approach of the sun eariyl-ege^- 
from a dark nebula to its present condi- tion - 
tion, as developed in a former lecture, be correct, 



72 the creation; 

the appearance of plants before the appearance of 
the sun is every way probable. The earlier plants 
required moisture and fed on matter dissolved by 
acids, of which there was great abundance, but did 
not to the same extent depend on light. And we 
are, therefore, warranted in assuming that in the 
order of the creation, plants may have appeared 
before the atmosphere was so far freed from clouds 
and vapors as that the sun appeared. 

Another question follows. 

Were all the types of plants introduced in this 
early and obscure period — the Acrogen, 

First appear- J x a 7 

ance of differ- Endogen, and Exogen? By no means. 
The answer is readily inferred from what 
has been said before. By " the introduction of 
plant life " is meant simply the first appearance of 
any kind of plants upon the earth. The different 
types followed each other at somewhat uncertain 
intervals. The time cannot be definitely stated. 
We may not be able to determine the precise point 
at which any particular type made its first appear- 
ance. We can only judge by the period of its 
culmination, and that can be determined with 
little difficulty by reason of the abundant traces 
left in the rocks. 

The subject of plant life in the Hebrew record 
is disposed of in a single paragraph, for that 
account can be* taken at best only as announcing 



PLANT LIFE. 73 

in the fewest words the several divisions and im- 
portant steps in the order of creation. We can- 
not suppose, however, the appearance of the differ- 
ent kinds of plants there briefly described, to have 
come in any single period of the world's history — 
only that at this point the first of plants ap- 
peared. 

One point more, having some relation to the 
next lecture. Plant life is represented as _ 

k Plants came 

preceding animal life. The truth is that before 
fossil remains of animals are found as far 
back as those of plants. But there are good rea- 
sons for supposing them to have been a subse- 
quent creation. Two or three reasons may be 
briefly stated. 

i. Plants will thrive in an atmosphere too 
highly charged with noxious gases, and probably 
in water too highly heated, for the maintenance 
of animal life. And one office of early vegetation 
probably was to absorb the gases and clear the 
atmosphere for animal respiration. Plants can live 
where animals cannot. 

2. Plants are the natural food of animals. 
Plants feed chiefly on inorganic matter ; animals 
on organic. There are exceptions to this rule. 
Some plants consume organic matter. The mistle- 
toe, indian-pipe, and other parasites derive their 
substance almost entirely from the plants to 



74 THE CREATION. 

which they are attached. A few plants also feed 
on animals. The Sundew for instance and the 
Venus'-flytrap capture insects and appropriate 
them to their own sustenance. But these excep- 
tions are of comparatively small importance. It 
may be accepted as the general rule, that plants 
can live without animals; animals cannot thrive 
without plants. The conclusion follows, therefore, 
that the first appearance of plants came before 
that of animals. The animal kingdom was the 
later creation. 

Still more conclusive reasons for this statement 
will be assigned when we come to read the geo- 
logical record in the sixth lecture. 



V. 



Animal Life. 



" Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature 
that hath life, and fowl that may rly above the earth in the open 
firmament of heaven. And ... let the earth bring forth the 
living creature after his kind." 

" See through this air, this ocean, and this earth, 
All matter quick and bursting into birth. 
Above, how high ! progressive life may go ! 
Around, how wide ! how deep extend below ! " 



V. 

ANIMAL LIFE. 

OUR subject is the Animal Kingdom. 

In tracing the history of the creation thus far, 
it must be obvious to every one that the 
order has been constantly from a lower nature 
toward a higher condition. A notable 
illustration may be found in the change from in- 
organic nature to a state of organism and life. 
The same fact appeared in the last lecture in the 
history of plant life ; beginning with plants of 
spongy texture and the simplest structure, pass- 
ing through the herbs bearing flower and seeds, 
and culminating in the fruit and nut-growing trees. 
The orderly development thus traced will be found 
no less discernible in the animal kingdom. It is 
on such facts as these that Mr. Darwin and others 
base the doctrine of Evolution. 

And to the doctrine of Evolution, as The doctrine 

of 

the development of an order and the Evolution. 

unfolding of a plan in nature, there can 

be no reasonable objection. We frankly confess it 



^8 THE CREATION. 

seems to us written on the face and stamped in 
the very nature of things. 

But as Kingsley has well said, " If there has 
been an evolution there, must have been an evolv- 
er." We cannot predicate or anticipate an order 
without an ordainer. There must have been an 
intelligent power back of it to devise the scheme 
and at least set the train on its way. We cannot 
conceive of harmony and order as a necessary or 
even possible outgrowth of chaos and blind con- 
fusion. With intelligence and power all else is 
possible ; without these nothing is certain. And if 
we say law regulates and controls the processes in 
nature, the question merely changes form ; whence 
came the law ? Nothing is explained by the mere 
substitution of a word. 

Moreover, it is not true, as some have assumed, 
that Darwin denies the existence of a 

Darwin's ^ , , r i • 

theism Creator, as one or two passages from his 
published writings will sufficiently indi- 
cate. "To my mind," says he, "it accords better 
with what we know of the laws impressed on mat- 
ter by the Creator, that the production and ex- 
tinction of the past and present inhabitants of the 
world should have been due to secondary causes, 
than that each species has been independently cre- 
ated." And again, from his ORIGIN OF SPECIES: 
" There is grandeur in this view of life, with its 



ANIMAL LIFE. 79 

several powers, having been originally breathed by 
the Creator into a few forms or into one ; and 
that while this planet has gone cycling on accord- 
ing to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a 
beginning, endless forms, most beautiful and most 
wonderful, have been and are being evolved." 

He has great faith, that after life was started 
on the earth there were sufficient causes 
in nature to bring out of it all the sue- nature 
cessive types and orders. He does not 
claim that this has been demonstrated or that it 
can be conclusively proven, on account of the great 
number of " missing links " in the chain of devel- 
opment. But he assumes that because these links 
cannot now be found, it does not, of necessity, 
follow that they never existed. That may be true. 
But until some clear traces of such links can be 
found the assumption that they ever existed is 
mere supposition or hypothesis and not established 
science. 

Prof. Huxley, in his New York lectures in 1877, 
attached much importance to the series 
of fossils recently discovered in some of ^*j^ s 
our western territories by Prof. O. C. 
Marsh, because, beginning with a remote resem- 
blance to the horse, they gradually changed to a 
very close resemblance, and so went far to fill up 
a hitherto wide hiatus in the chain of development. 



80 THE CREATION. 

But if every break in the chain were filled, the 
question of the origin of life would still remain. 

There are, indeed, two separate ques- 
questions in- tions involved : 

First, the origin of life. 

Second, the method of its transmission. 

Prof. Mivart assumes, and we think rightly, that 
with the first, physical science has nothing to do, 
and is incompetent to deal. Nevertheless we are 
not forbidden to inquire. 

There are two principal theories, with various 
modifications of each. 

1. The germ theory ; that is, that all life pro- 
ceeds from an antecedent form of life — and which 
implies a creator. 

2. The theory of spontaneous generation, that is, 
that life is evolved from dead matter, in certain 
conditions, without the aid or operation of any- 
thing beyond itself. 

The latter theory is by no means new. Cen- 
turies ago it was believed that tadpoles were gen- 
erated out of the mud along the borders of stag- 
nant pools, by the vivifying action of the sun ; 
caterpillars from the leaves on which they fed, and 
eels from the oozy slime of the Nile. And the 
hypothesis, in one form or another, has been re- 
vived or restated many times since the period of 
early Greek history. 



ANIMAL LIFE. 8 I 

The question has been very fully discussed re- 
cently, and with the aid of elaborate ex- Spontaneous 
periments, by Profs. Tyndall and H. C. /f^&aund 
Bastian, but with widely differing results. Bastian.) 
To reach any definite conclusion and make the test 
satisfactory it was agreed to take dead matter — 
isolate it from all contact with life — place it under 
favorable conditions for the development of life, if 
such thing were possible, and await the result. The 
experiment was a difficult one, but followed out 
with faithful detail by both experimenters. The 
material used was chiefly a liquid containing an in- 
fusion of hay, bits of cheese, or other organic sub- 
stance. This was put in a bottle and brought to 
the boiling point, to destroy whatever germs it 
might contain — the bottle then hermetically sealed 
to protect the liquid from all possible contact with 
surrounding life, and left in a moderately warm 
temperature for several days. If at the end of 
the time the liquid showed signs of fermentation 
or putrefaction, it was taken as an indication of 
life ; if no such signs appeared, it was regarded as 
absolutely sterile. 

A great number of tests were made. But the 
result, thus far, seems to have been to array these 
eminent authorities against each other; Bastian 
claiming to have demonstrated the fact, Tyndall 
to have disproved the theory. 



82 THE CREATION. 

It appeared at one time that the origin of life, 
in some of its forms at least, might , be „ 

' ° Bathybius 

traced to a slime that covered the bot- (Huxley and 
torn of the deep seas, since specks of liv- 
ing matter were found in it. The suggestion awak- 
ened much interest among scientific men, and Profs. 
Kuxley and Haeckel in particular entered into a 
careful investigation. It afterward appeared that 
this slime occurs only in isolated sections of the 
sea-bottom — that oftener than otherwise it con- 
tains no life ; and finally, by the microscopic in- 
vestigations of Sir Lionel Beale, that this ooze or 
slime, instead of a bed of primitive life, is decay- 
ing matter out of which the life has not yet 
wholly perished. The living specks were the last 
of their generation rather than the first. 

Indeed, there is little doubt that further inves- 
tigation will prove the simple microscopic forms of 
life known as monad, bacteria, and the like, to be 
the result of decomposition of higher forms of life, 
rather than the beginnings of new life. The ooze 
at the bottom of ponds often shows traces of ani- 
mal life, but it is decaying rather than primitive 
life. Instead of representing matter in the pro- 
cess of changing to the first form of life, it rep- 
resents life in the last stages of decay, on the 
point of lapsing into the condition of dead mat- 
ter. 



ANIMAL LIFE. 83 

Prof. Huxley, in his recent study of " The Cray- 
fish," speaking- of the wonderful changes TT , , 

r & & Huxley's 

that take place in the egg as it develops "The Cray- 
into the embryo animal, says they are 
" the necessary consequences of the interaction of 
the molecular forces resident in the substance of 
the impregnated ovum with the condition to which 
it is exposed," and compares it to the process of 
crystallization in minerals. But, aside from the fact 
that there is as yet an unbridged chasm between 
organic and inorganic substances — the one depend- 
ing upon molecular stability and the other upon 
the exact opposite, molecular instability, or a con- 
stant change of atoms — the changes in crystal- 
lization are purely chemical. Does Prof. Huxley 
intend to be understood as regarding the changes 
in the egg as purely chemical ? We think not ; and 
if not, then the comparison fails. There is unques- 
tionably some force or forces acting in the egg. 
But " the interaction of molecular forces " affords 
no explanation whatever. That operation needs 
explanation quite as much as the original process. 

Again, after noting the close resemblance be- 
tween the lowest forms of animals and plants, he 
proceeds: "Given, one of these protoplasmic bodies, 
of which we are unable to say whether it is plant 
or animal, and endow it with such inherent capaci- 
ties of self-modification [the italics are our own] 



84 THE CREATION. 

as are manifested under our eyes by developing 
ova, and we have a sufficient reason for the exist- 
ence of any animal or any plant." But Prof. Hux- 
ley will surely concede that the assumption that 
matter is thus endowed, is the very point to be 
proved. And further, if such powers of modifica- 
tion are found in matter in some conditions, the 
question still remains, Whence came they? Are 
they due merely to conditions, or is there really 
an added force? Thus far it must be confessed 
the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the 
latter. 

And so, after all this parley and delay, the sci- 

Present ent ^ c world is practically thrown back 

attitude of upon the Professor's own dictum in the 

science. . . , . 

" Encyclopedia Bntannica, article Biology, 
that " of the causes which have led to the origina- 
tion of living matter, we know absolutely nothing." 
The curious suggestion of Sir William Thomp- 
son, that life was imported to the earth 
Meteonc on- ^ meteoric agency, need not detain us 
long, for it is but a suggestion at the 
best, with no pretence of proof; and if the fact 
were conceded, it would only push the question of 
origin a little farther back : it would explain noth- 
ing. For manifestly we can predicate nothing of 
meteoric matter that may not with equal propriety 
be predicated of the earth. If the meteor is a 



ANIMAL LIFE. 85 

fragment of a decayed or disjointed world, how 
came life into that world ? This attempt at ex- 
planation, if it is seriously intended as an explana- 
tion, leaves the inquirer just where it finds him. 

A word, in passing, as to the development of 
one race of animals out of another. It 
must be said the like has never been wit- , p ° sslble 

development. 

nessed, though many attempts have been 
made. In no case has one animal ever been 
known to produce an animal of a race or species 
essentially different from itself. And though Prof. 
Haeckel insists, with some show of impatience, that 
it is unscientific to demand such proof, considering 
the time required to produce essential variations, 
it is certainly quite as unreasonable to ask us to 
accept what it is confessed has never yet been 
proven. It is true that some modifications have 
been effected in animals under domestication, as 
shown by Mr. Darwin, but that is no argument 
for variation by " natural selection;" the one im- 
plies intelligent oversight, the other expressly dis- 
owns it. 

What, then, of the germ theory? 

It is conceded on all hands that we have no 
certain knowledge of life produced other- 
wise than from some antecedent form of theory™ 
life. The plant springs from a seed 
which encloses a living germ. The offspring de- 



S6 THE CREATION. 

scends from the parent through a series of changes 
beginning in a living cell. 

All our knowledge and experience, then, are in 
favor of this theory. 

But the existence of a living germ, whether 
one or more, with the possibility of definite de- 
velopment, implies the existence of a Creator with 
intelligence, power, will, and purpose. And, as be- 
fore said, with so much conceded, all else follows 
easily. 

To enter with more detail upon the various 
theories touching the origin and transmission of life 
would lead us quite outside the range of discus- 
sion contemplated in these pages, and we turn now, 
after so long a digression, to the immediate sub- 
ject of the present lecture: The Animal Kingdom. 

After the appearance of plants which might 
serve as food for animals, and after the 

The animal , c , , c 

world atmosphere was so lar cleared of poison- 
ous gases as to adapt it for respiration, 
came a new order of existence, the animal creation, 
briefly epitomized in Genesis thus: " And God said, 
let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving 
creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above 
the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And 
... let the earth bring forth the living creature 
after his kind, cattle and creeping things and 
beasts of the earth . . . and it was so." 



ANIMAL LIFE. 87 

It is here stated that the water and the earth 
brought forth living things. But, as we 
recorcT^ h ave had occasion to note before, the 
narrative recognizes no fortuitous hap- 
pening in this — no chance development or occur- 
rence. It was according to the divine ordering of 
events. There the author finds, every time, his 
sure cause and sufficient starting-point. It was the 
Creator working by plain and definite methods, 
with intent to bring out of chaos the order, har- 
mony, and beauty of a completed and peopled 
world.* 

* Since the above was written a notable work by R. W. Wright, 
entitled "Life its True Genesis" has appeared, in which the posi- 
tion is assumed and defended with much skill and labor that " the 
primordial germs (meaning germinal principles of life) of all living 
things, man alone excepted, are in themselves upon the earth, and 
that they severally make their appearance, each after its kind, when- 
ever and wherever the necessary environing conditions exist." In 
these facts he finds the interpretation of the words, " Let the earth 
bring forth," etc. Not that the germs develop from the soil, ac- 
cording to evolution, but that they exist, were implanted in the earth, 
and that they not only may but must appear, whenever the neces- 
sary conditions occur. He illustrates by the alternations of forest 
trees and changes of vegetable growth, without the known presence 
of seeds, as the fire-weed appears in a burnt forest though it may 
not have been known within hundreds of rmles before, plantain 
springs up about a new house, aconite about an alpine hut, and 
white clover instead of the native wild grasses, in a used pasture. 
On the same principle he would account for the simtdtaneous ap- 
pearance of like flora, in widely remote sections of the earth. If 
we understand the author — we could wish he had been more ex- 
plicit on this point — he would apply the same reasoning to the ani- 
mal world, man alone excepted. The theory is a bold and some- 
what novel one. 



SS THE CREATION. 

According to this record, the earliest life was 
in the sea. There is nothing definite as to form 
or quality, only that it was a "moving thing that 
had life," and was thus distinguished from the 
plant which is usually fixed, and that it " brought 
forth abundantly," or multiplied rapidly. The de- 
scription is that of an animal of low grade or of 
the simplest structure. The next mention is of 
fowl, or what is deemed a more accurate render- 
ing, " winged creatures," and must include the 
forms of life that are in the air. Allusion is next 
made again to life in the water under the general 
term " great whales," or reptiles. 

And following this by so wide an interval as to 
be placed at the beginning of the following day, 
came " the beasts of the earth," including cattle 
and creeping things, or the animals in general that 
live on the land, as distinguished from those that 
live in the air or dwell in the sea. 

Let us claim no more for this account than the 
language fully warrants. Life, first in the water, 
then in the air, then on the land. This is the 
order indicated, and we must suppose the order in- 
tended. Again, we are led to infer that the first 
forms of animal life were very simple, scarcely dif- 
fering from plants, except that they were endowed 
with power to move, and that in process of time 
and with some orderly sequence, the line proceeded 



ANIMAL LIFE. 89 

toward higher and more complex forms ; to the 
fishes that inhabit the waters, the birds that peo- 
ple the air, the cattle that roam on the hills, and 
the beasts that prowl in the jungle. 

This is, in brief, the story told us in Genesis of 
the creation and appearance of the animal world. 

Let us now turn to other fields of inquiry with 
reference to the same things. 

First, let us note what science teaches of the 
varieties of animal life, or the divisions of 
the animal kingdom as a whole. And -^Js^- 311 " 
then let us read in the rocks, as far as 
we are able, the order in which these several divis- 
ions made their first appearance. For it is on the 
fossils we must rely at last to know positively 
which came first and which came afterward. And 
fortunately, we shall find this an easier task than 
in the case of plants, especially in the earlier ages, 
as the remains are so much more abundant and 
more perfectly preserved in form. 

We encounter a difficulty here in adopting a di- 
vision of the animal kingdom that will be intelligi- 
ble to all without extended explanation. 

There are certain broad distinctions in Different 
the animal world that are useful in such 
discussions, as far as they go. There are the cold- 
blooded animals and the warm-blooded. There are 
the gill-breathers and the lung-breathers. But these 



90 THE CREATION. 

are not sufficiently specific for our purpose. A di- 
vision was suggested by an eminent naturalist a 
few years ago, which for its simplicity we hoped 
might come into use. It was substantially this. 
Animals may be approximately classified thus : — 
I. Those with stomachs. 2. Those with shells. 3. 
Those with legs or other limbs. 4. Those with 
heads. That is to say, these parts severally are 
the specific characteristics of the different groups. 
The lowest type of animal has little if any organ- 
ism except a stomach. Then come those with 
stomachs, to be sure, but adding a shell for pro- 
tection ; or some type of limb for locomotion, 
whether on the ground, in the water, or in the 
air. While the most important part about the 
higher animal, as a distinctive type, is the head. 

But this classification, while peculiarly sugges- 
tive, was not sufficiently specific for scientific work, 
and never came into use. 

And there seems no resource left us but to 
turn to zoology, as in the last lecture to botany, 
and, simplifying the scientific terms as far as we 
may, adopt the classification there employed. 

Naturalists recognize five divisions of the ani- 
mal kingdom, namely: 
Zoological j p rotozoans; literally "first livers," 

distinctions. J 

generally microscopic, though sometimes 
attaining to considerable size. 



ANIMAL LIFE. 9 1 

II. Radiates, or star-shaped animals. 

III. Mollusks, or soft-bodied animals, generally 
with shells. 

IV. Articulates, having a jointed or ring-like 
structure. 

V. Vertebrates, or animals with internal skeleton, 
including a vertebral column, or backbone. 

All animals that live, and all of which we find 
any traces in the rocks, are of one of these classes. 
Let us examine the structure and mode of life of 
each. A single specimen of the first, the Proto- 
zoan, will answer our purpose. 

The Amoeba, a minute animal sometimes found 
in stagnant pools, seems nothing but a bit 
of pulp. The outside is much like jelly; ^J ° 
the inside somewhat granular. It has no 
limbs proper, and still it moves. It has no mouth, 
and still it eats. It will fasten on a seed, or other 
substance that will serve as food, no matter what 
part the seed touches first, and soon it will dis- 
appear inside the animal, and in due time the 
refuse is cast out in an equally mysterious way ; 
the animal having absorbed whatever was nutritious, 
ejects what does not serve its purpose. This is a 
type of the animal with a stomach, the first essen- 
tial in the living creature, and one that never 
looses its importance. Without a stomach that 
performs its functions well, there can be no sound 



9 2 THE CREATION. 

and healthy organism in any animal whether of 
high or low degree. The little animal just de- 
scribed will serve as an illustration of the simplest 
form of life, though the sponge is a more familiar 
example and one more easily examined. 

Next come the Radiates, so called from their 
star-like form, which in addition to a 
The Radiate, stomach have a perceptible mouth. They 
have also rays or parts branching in all 
directions much like the leaves of a plant, which 
serve them in moving through the water or in 
gathering food. 

Among the best known examples of these are 
the star-fish, the jelly fish, and most corals. Their 
structure and habits are simple, but a considerable 
advance over the Protozoans. 

Next in order come the Mollusks, including 

everything that wears a shell, either with- 

, r 1 " he , out or within, from the commonplace clam 

Mollusk. L 

and oyster to the artistically formed am- 
monite and the delicately tinted nautilus, and from 
the slow-footed snail to the slimy and voracious 
cuttle-fish, which there is little doubt is the mys- 
terious and dreaded sea-serpent of the modern seas. 
The almost infinite variety that make up this 
branch of the animal world will appear on exami- 
nation of any large collection of shells, such as 
natural history cabinets afford. 



ANIMAL LIFE. 93 

Most of these animals are included under the 
general name of " shell fish." But they are in no 
proper sense fishes. They have no more similarity 
in structure or habit to the fish than to the seal 
or manatee, which also inhabit the sea. 

And, now, does it occur to the reader that in 
all these classes of animals, Protozoans, Radiates, 
and Mollusks, there are scarcely any that live on 
dry land? The sea swarmed with life while as 
yet the land was destitute. 

But let us go a little farther, and we shall find 
there were different orders of life in store. 

The next division of the animal kingdom, the 
Articulates, having a ring-like or jointed 
structure, includes the lobster, which in The 

Articulate. 

place of shell has a closely articulated 
crust, together with the worms and all the insect 
world. This division has a few representatives in 
the sea, but takes us, for the most part, on to the 
land and into the air. It is unnecessary to cite 
particular examples. 

Finally comes the division known as the Verte- 
brates, in which the animal kingdom cul- 
minates, or reaches its highest perfection, vertebrate. 

Among the animals with backbon -s 
we shall find those that live in the water, those 
that live in the air, and those that live on the 
land. But it is a fact quite in accord with the 



94 THE . CREA TION. 

principle already established, that that in the sea 
came first, that in the air followed, and then that 
on the land. 

First the fishes, then the birds, then the beasts. 

So much for what science teaches of the divis- 
ions and characteristics of the animal kingdom. 

The question follows next, in what order did 
these several types of life appear, or was 

The order of .• 5 , y 

succession, their appearance simultaneous ? We pur- 
sue the same course as in dealing with 
plants in the last lecture. In the earliest rocks 
containing fossils of animals are found only Pro- 
tozoans, " first livers " as they are appropriately 
styled on that account. The remains are few, as 
might be expected, for they are slight and simple 
in structure, and therefore perishable. 

Next we find, in rocks somewhat later, the re- 
mains of Radiates, especially corals, and Mollusks of 
almost infinite variety. Beds of limestone are often 
found consisting almost wholly of one or the other 
of these. In coral limestone, however, traces of the 
original skeletons are comparatively rare ; they 
were broken and crushed in the process of con- 
solidation ; but in " shell-limestone " made up of 
the remains of mollusks, as that found near St. 
Augustine, Florida, the skeletons are often found 
almost as perfect as in the living animal. 

The foregoing, it will be observed, comprise the 



AN1M iL LIFE. 95 

first three types of life above described. As we 
proceed in our investigation, from the older toward 
the more recent rock formations, we shall find 
these several groups still, together with the Ar- 
ticulates, and the Vertebrates are also added, thus 
completing the list of distinct types of animal life. 
But the indications of an onward and upward pro- 
gress in the forms of life do not cease here. Each 
succeeding age witnesses a marked change in the 
several groups or types of life. And this is par- 
ticularly observable among Vertebrates. 

First or lowest among vertebrated animals are 
fishes. And to such rank did they attain at one 
time, in point of numbers, variety, and size, that the 
period has received the name of the Age of Fishes. 
After this came an Age of Reptiles ; the reptile 
ranking above the fish in completeness of structure 
and adaptedness to different conditions of life. 
Then came the Age of Mammals, generally large 
land animals. And finally the Age of Man, who 
represents the highest class in the whole group of 
vertebrated animals. 

Such is the story, in brief, the rocks tell us of 
the various types and classes of animals that have 
lived and died upon the earth, together with the 
order in which they succeeded one another. 

How do we know such animals as these ever 
lived ? In the same way that if, digging in an 



go THE CREATION. 

ancient cemetery, we came upon the skeleton of a 
_ L . very large man, we should know that a 

Testimony J ° 

of giant had sometime been buried there. 

We find the remains of them in the rocks 
that compose the crust of the earth. No such re- 
mains would appear had not such creatures lived. 
Nor would such relics have been embodied in the 
rocks, had they not lived and died at the time 
such rocks were in process of formation. But this 
will more fully appear in the succeeding lecture. 
And now the reader may be interested to know 

what points of correspondence clearly ex- 

Companson r r J 

of ist between the record just laid down and 

that which appears in Genesis. It would 
be idle to say we find in the latter a detailed 
history or complete analysis. The author was not 
writing a treatise on zoology. He, at most, indi- 
cates only the most obvious characteristics of dif- 
ferent classes of animals, and that chiefly by the 
element in which they live. The order observed is 
this. First life — abundant life — in the sea, then life 
in the air, then life on the land. 

We found by indications in the rocks that the 
sea abounded with life, while the land was des- 
titute; then that there was probably life in the 
air, before any pertaining strictly to the land ; 
and finally that " the beasts of the earth " — in 
other words, land animals, were the last to appear 



ANIMAL LIFE. 97 

preceding the advent of man. These points will 
plainly appear to any one who choses to examine 
the records together. 

The precise point at which each group or di- 
vision of animals made its first appearance cannot 
be certainly determined — for, like the earliest plants, 
the earliest animals may have disappeared entirely, 
owing to the condition of the earth, its tempera- 
ture and surroundings, and the volcanic convulsions 
that took place. But the time at which each rose 
into prominence, and became the leading feature or 
controlling power, can be determined with all the 
accuracy science can give, with the aid of the most 
abundant fossils. 

And so we return to the point from which we 
started — that after the surface of the 
earth was divided into land and sea, and Conclusion, 
the hardened crust had worn and softened 
into beds of soil — after plants had had all the life 
to themselves awhile, and the air was so far purified 
it could be breathed ; then, by the divine fiat, came 
forth in the waters the moving creature that had 
life, and winged creatures that fly above the earth ; 
and then appeared on the land, cattle and creeping 
things and beasts of the earth, each after his kind. 

And thus was the earth made ready, by long 
process of preparation, for the abode of intelli- 
gence and the use of man. 



VI. 



Reading the Record. 



" The invisible things of him are clearly seen, being under- 
stood by the things that are made." 



'In contemplation of created things, 
By steps we may ascend to God." 

— Milton. 



' Nature hath made nothing so base, but can 
Read some instruction to the wisest man." 



" And in that rock are shapes of shells, and forms 
Of creatures in old worlds, 
Whose generations lived and died ere man 
Appeared upon the scene." 

— Adapted from Crabbe. 



VI. 

READING THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD. 

We propose in this discourse to see what kind 
of record geology can give us of life upon the 
earth. 

To that end we must speak first of certain 
rock formations; whence the material 
comes, how it is deposited, and what f r0C ks 
changes follow. And as nature's methods 
are very constant, if we determine the processes 
for one age we solve the problem for all ages. 

The formation of different kinds of rocks may 
be illustrated as follows. After a heavy rain, the 
water that flows along the streets of a country 
village, where the conditions of nature are but 
slightly changed, will be turbid and muddy ; mov- 
ing more or less rapidly according to the descent 
of the ground, and carrying along sand, clay, 
gravel, and such refuse as may come in its way. 
Moreover, if the surface be uneven and the soil 
soft or friable, the hillsides will be furrowed out 
and partially washed away. As the rivulets from 



102 THE CREATION. 

streets or hills collect in a valley, they will form 

a current of increased volume and force, that will 

still bear onward its accumulation of sediment. 

If, now, the stream enter a pond or lake the 

,. current will widen, and so lose its force, 

Sediment 

gathered and and this heterogeneous mass of material, 

distributed. .,, . ..... - 

will be assorted and distributed some- 
what as follows. The heavier particles, that is, the 
gravel, will sink first and be deposited in a bed of 
comparatively narrow limits near the entrance of 
the stream. The sand, being lighter, will be borne 
farther out, till the current can carry it no longer, 
when it will sink, and in consequence be dis- 
tributed over a wider surface and above the gravel. 
And if the quantity of sand and gravel be about 
equal, it is evident the layer of sand will be as 
much thinner than that of the gravel, as the area 
covered is greater. 

Then, again, the silt — finely comminuted clay, 
called dust when dry — being still lighter than sand, 
will be borne still farther out, and distributed in 
consequence over a still larger area than either of 
the others. 

And, now, when in process of ages these beds 
of sedimentary deposits solidify — change to solid 
rock, the lower bed will be conglomerate, the mid- 
dle one sandstone, and the upper slate. A similar 
process goes on, on a much larger scale in the 



READING THE RECORD. 103 

ocean, especially in the formation of the two va- 
rieties last named, but the smaller body of water 
is more convenient for our purpose of illustration. 

But there is another important matter to be 
considered in this connection. 

In case of heavy rains various fragments of 
organic remains, vegetable or animal, are 

iMi 1 1 1 1 Origin of 

likely to be washed into the stream fossils. 
and deposited with the other sediment. 
Such a fragment may be buried in the gravel, in 
the sand, or in the silt; and so imbedded becomes 
a fossil, that may appear if the ledge of rock is 
ever opened. It is clear that it must drift in and 
be deposited while the sediment is gathering and 
before it is solidified. And we may, therefore, con- 
clude that such fossil is a relic of a plant or ani- 
mal that lived on the earth when that rock was 
forming, or at no very long period before ; and 
that it, therefore, gives us a clue to the kind of 
life in that period. 

The chances of the fossil being preserved, 
however, depend largely on the particu- 
lar bed into which it falls. ^fossnT 

Conglomerate is not favorable for the 
preservation of a foreign body : first, because the 
gravel tends to grind and destroy it; and, second, 
because the rock being porous, water percolates 
through and tends to dissolve it. Nor is the slate 



104 THE CREATION, 

much more favorable. Owing to the crystallizing 
process that makes the slate bed easily divisible 
into thin plates, the form of the fossil is likely 
to be distorted beyond recognition, if not entirely 
destroyed. Of the formations described, therefore, 
the sandstone is likely to show most fossils in a 
fair state of preservation. We have now indicated 
the mode of origin of three important kinds of 
rocks. There is a fourth, formed in a different 
way, we must also notice, as it is the most im- 
portant of all the fossilliferous series. 

Lime, which makes up so large a portion of the 

rock systems, is held in solution in the 

ngm o wa t ers f the sea as well as of lakes and 

limestone. 

rivers, and contributes largely to the 
structure of both animals and plants. When an 
animal dies, its skeleton, whether bone or shell, is 
readily transformed into limestone, unless the con- 
ditions are entirely adverse. And many limestone 
beds are made up almost wholly of such remains. 
From the earliest formation of sedimentary rocks, 
this process has been going on, especially in the 
sea, and is still going on. 

With each geological epoch, a new layer of 
limestone is added to some part of the earth's 
crust. 

Oftentimes these remains lose their shape en- 
tirely, or may be finely powdered by a process of 



READING THE RECORD. 105 

attrition, or crushed and folded by superincumbent 
pressure, before the bed is finally solidified. Or, 
after solidification they may undergo a sort of 
metamorphosis by which the original structure is 
lost, though the substance remains, as in finely 
grained marble which is nothing but common lime- 
stone changed by pressure and heat. 

And, again, the fossils may be unearthed ages 
on ages after they are deposited, almost as dis- 
tinctly shaped as they were in life. They con- 
tribute in either case, however, to the substance of 
the bed of which they form a part. 

With this analysis of rock formations, if we 
will briefly recall the divisions and distinctions be- 
fore noted in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, 
whence all fossils come, we shall now be able to 
make out a fairly complete history of life on the 
earth, from its early if not its first appearance, to 
the present era. 

Plants are divisible into three general classes, 
distinguished by their modes of growth 
and fruiting or seeding, and conveniently bi/ki^dom" 
designated as Acrogens, Endogens, and 
Exogens. We need not restate the distinctions in 
detail. 

The animal kingdom is divisible into The animal 

kingdom. 

five general classes : Protozoans, Radiates, 
Mollusks, Articulates, and Vertebrates, the distinc- 



106 THE CREATION. 

tions between which will be readily recalled. The 
first is represented by the infusoria and the sponge ; 
the second by the coral and the star-fish ; the third 
by the snail on land and oyster in the sea ; the 
fourth by the worm on land, the insect in the air, 
and lobster in the sea ; and the fifth by the fish, 
reptile, bird, quadruped, and man. 

We have, then, before us a view of the princi- 
pal rock formations in which fossils may be found. 
And also the two sources or kingdoms which con- 
tribute fossils to the rocks when forming. 

And, now, to the record itself. 

The first formed rocks were, of course, of 
. . . igneous origin — came out of the fire, or 

Origin ^ & 

of earliest were solidified by cooling from a molten 
state. In these there could have been 
no life or remains of life ; for till after this period, 
no living thing could have existed on the earth, 
by reason of the intense heat. Moreover, the first 
formed rocks, resulting from the cooling process, 
must have been corroded on the surface and worn 
away, forming soft beds of soil, either on the 
rocks, or by drifting, at the bottom of the sea, 
before there could have been any kind of even 
vegetable life. But this seems not to have been 
long delayed, for in very early beds of sedimen- 
tary rocks are found traces of some forms of life. 
For convenience we adopt the geologist's desig- 



READING THE RECORD. 107 

nations of the successive eras or ages. [See chart 
foil ozv ing this lecture^ 

The earliest sedimentary rocks of any consider 
able extent are known as the Laurentian, „ ,. 

Earliest 

and in parts of America are estimated sedimentary 
to have attained a thickness or depth of 
thirty thousand feet. The period in which they 
were formed was long supposed to have been life- 
less. But recent discoveries have changed that 
conclusion. The plants, as plants, have entirely 
disappeared, no form of one being distinguishable 
in fossil. 

But the existence of extensive beds of graphite 
— sometimes, though incorrectly, styled _ „ 

' ' . J Earliest evi- 

black lead — in the Laurentian rocks, im- dence of life 
plies the existence of plants in that ra P : e • 
period. For since graphite is believed to have the 
same origin as coal, namely from plants, it could 
not have been formed before there were plants of 
which to form it. 

And as the first distinguishable plants above 
this formation are all of the first and simplest 
class, namely Acrogens, we have the best of rea- 
sons for presuming the Laurentian plants, or the 
plants which grew when the Laurentian rocks 
were forming, were entirely of this class. 

Moreover, some diligent explorers, notably Dr. 
J. W. Dawson, of McGill College, Montreal, has 



108 THE CREATION. 

discovered in the upper or later Laurentian, the 
fossil of an animal, Eozoon (dawning life), 
Eozoon so simple and yet so obscure in struc- 
ture, that its organic character is still 
in some doubt. If it is an animal, as it prob- 
ably is, it is of the very lowest form, one of 
the minor Protozoans. Life began at the lowest 
point, and with the simplest mode of growth. 
Here, then, we find the introduction of life upon 
the earth, in the formf of plants, and possibly of 
animals also. The occurrence of limestone and 
beds of iron ore in the same formation are also 
regarded as signs of the existence of some kind of 
life, since these owe their origin chiefly to organic 
agency. But little account has yet been made of 
this fact by the geologist, however, in dealing with 
the Laurentian rocks. 

We now move up one step in the series. 
Next in order after the Laurentian came the 
m Silurian rocks, so named from a district 

The 

Silurian in England where they show at the sur- 

formation. r —,, . r 

face. Ihey are made up of successive 
series of beds of sandstone, limestone, and shale (a 
soft irregular slate), nature having now got fairly 
to work, wearing away rocks, transporting the 
abraded material by means of wind and ocean 
currents, and building them up in other places. 
We find in these rocks the remains of both 



READING THE RECORD. IO9 

plants and animals, many still of low type and 
very simple structure, such as the sea-weed among 
plants and the sponge and coral among animals ; 
but there are found also both plants and animals of 
higher forms and more varied constitutions, showing 
a great advance over the life of the former period. 

The Radiates doubtless existed in great num- 
bers, especially corals and crinoids, or flower ani- 
mals, as they are sometimes called by reason of 
their peculiar shape ; but as they are fragile or 
pulpy in substance, and therefore easily destroyed, 
they do not appear in great numbers in the rocks. 
But the Mollusk, with his strong shell to protect 
him in life and keep his memory alive when he 
is dead, appeared in strong force, and some beds' 
of the Silurian rocks, as those which appear at 
Trenton Falls, New York, are composed almost 
wholly of its remains. To walk along the shelv- 
ing banks of that stream (Canada Creek), or on 
portions of its dry bed when the water is low, 
as it is sometimes late in summer, is to tread 
upon millions of skeletons or casements of these 
animals that lived in the sea in the Silurian age. 

This formation, extending eastward 

' & The Green 

into Vermont, was metamorphosed or Mountain 
crystallized in the upheaval of the Green 
Mountains, and constitutes the extensive marble 
beds of that region. 



110 THE CREATION. 

There was as yet little if any life upon the 
land. The ocean was inhabited — the scene, per- 
haps, of strife and depredation ; the land was 
almost utterly bare and still. 

The plants of this period either did not ad- 
vance so rapidly, or, as seems more proba- 
anso e ^ their softer substance rendered them 

biiunan age. 7 

more liable to destruction in the geologic 
convulsions and revolutions that marked, at that 
early day, the changes from one period to another. 
What plants do reveal themselves, however, show 
a considerable variety, including a large number of 
marine plants and in the upper layers a few that 
grew on the land. Some additions have been 
made by recent explorations, and others may still 
be added to the list. The whole number of plants 
that can be identified is small in comparison with 
the number of animals, and they are chiefly if not 
entirely of the class of Acrogens. This difference 
in number is nothing remarkable, however, consid- 
ering the readiness with which tender herbage 
yields to the action of the elements. 

Leaving now the Silurian we pass next to the 

The Devonian formation, named also from an 

Devonian English district. Hugh Miller styled it 

formation. 

the " Old Red Sandstone. And here 
we shall find some marked changes in the types 
of life among both animals and plants. First the 



READING THE RECORD. Ill 

plants were much more numerous; or if not more 
numerous in growth, then more successfully pre- 
served in fossil. They belong chiefly still to the 
first class of plants, though one or two, of higher 
but uncertain type, have been identified. It must 
be borne in mind that the extent of sea was much 
greater than at a later period, and that of land 
correspondingly less. And this may account for 
the fact that the plants continued of that class 
that flourishes best in the sea, or in immediate 
proximity to it. The higher plants require high 
and comparatively dry land. 

But the animal life of the Devonian period was 
abundant and varied. Not only did the Mollusks 
hold a place, as to numbers, almost equalling that 
of their Silurian congeners, differing merely in 
slight structural details, attaining perhaps some- 
thing more of symmetry and something more of 
distinctive character ; and the Radiates, especially 
corals, multiply and extend with great rapidity 
and contribute their short-lived skeletons to the 
forming rocks, and the Articulate — insect — begin 
to wing its way upon the humid air, but the fish 
also appeared, which, having a backbone, belongs 
to the highest class of animals, the Vertebrates. 

The latter were of considerable variety and 
vast numbers, insomuch that the period is known 
in geology as the Age of Fishes. It was evidently 



112 THE CREATION. 

also a time of depredation and reprisals among 

these denizens of the deep. And many 
Fishes °^ them were amply equipped for the 

fray. They had coats of mail, consisting 
of thick bony plates, with carapace, like a shield 
about the head, and sharp spike-like teeth that 
not only fitted them for self-defence, but must 
have made them the terror of their less securely 
armored neighbors. But such is the way of animal 
life. The stronger subsist upon the weaker. And 
but for their prodigious rapidity of increase, 
" bringing forth abundantly," the tribes of smaller 
animals would long ago have disappeared. What 
is lost in one way, however, is gained in another, 
and nature is never defeated of her ends by any 
casual contingency. 

We move now one step farther upward in the 
scale. 

Next in order above the Devonian rocks comes 

the Carboniferous system, including the 
period extensive coal formations which supply 

so important a necessity to-day. In this 
period the development of plants was most re- 
markable, both as to numbers and variety. 
Hitherto we have found very few higher than the 
first and lowest class. In the coal period this 
division still held the leading place. They grew 
to enormous size, and formed rank and tangled 



READING THE RECORD. II3 

jungles in the low and marshy districts which bor- 
dered on the sea, and held some low valleys of 
the interior. 

The tree-fern, the sigillaria a huge club-moss, 
and the calamite a giant rush, were among the 
striking forms of vegetable life. To these were 
due the vast accumulations of vegetable matter of 
which the coal beds were formed. Crushed down 
and pressed together beneath still later rock for- 
mations, they lost their fibrous structure and were 
thus metamorphosed into the coal that serves the 
world so well. 

But though Acrogens still held the first rank 
in point of numbers and probably of size, 
they did not comprise the entire vege- p^nts 
tation of the period. The higher types, 
introduced sparingly in the preceding period, now 
advanced to a place of some importance. Exogens 
appeared upon the uplands and drifted, sometimes 
in the form of prostrate trunks, into the swamps, 
where the coal plants proper grew. The varieties 
of Exogens were few, however, and bore a remote 
resemblance to some of the pines of the modern 
world. 

The period was remarkable for this fact, that 
it first comprehended all the general classes of 
vegetable life. What changes followed in succeed- 
ing ages consisted in new orders and varieties, 



114 THE CREATION. 

not new modes of growth. The system of plant 
life was complete. 

The same remark will apply to the animal 
kingdom in the period of the coal formations. 

The Protozoans still existed as they had from 
the early dawn of life. Among Radiates 

Variety of . 

animals, the corals were less luxuriant than in 
the preceding age, for much of the shal- 
low sea had a muddy bottom, which corals do not 
like. 

The Mollusks still held important rank, and left 
their contributions of shells to the forming rocks. 

The Articulates grew into more importance, and 
included a few related to the trilobite, that luxu- 
riated in the mud along the borders of the seas 
and lakes, and insects that crawled in and out 
among the reeking plants, or buzzed and hummed 
in myriad numbers in the moist warm atmosphere. 
While among Vertebrates, the fishes of the Devo- 
nian period were greatly reduced in numbers and 
in part superseded by different species ; and several 
varieties of creatures classed among the reptiles 
were added, especially those of amphibious nature. 
The system of life was thus complete, both in the 
animal and the vegetable kingdoms. There were 
no new general classes or divisions to be added, 
though the variety of orders, families, and species 
that followed was almost numberless. 



READING THE RECORD. 115 

And now there came a change in the method 
of advance ; be^innincr with forms of ex- 

° Change 

traordinary size, first plants and then ani- in method of 
mals — the natural order, observe — and 
then subordinating size to other and higher char- 
acteristics. 

This series of changes began in the coal period, 
when plants attained to gigantic propor- 
tions, and was followed, as we shall find Reptiles 
by taking another upward step, by the 
Reptilian Age, during the formation of the Meso- 
zoic (middle life) rocks. 

In this period all the several classes of animals 
existed, in more or less numerous types, from the 
Protozoan to the Vertebrate, and the usual pro- 
cesses of rock formation went on ; but the reptile, 
introduced sparingly,, in the form of a few swim- 
ming lizards and the like, in the preceding age, 
now assumed the leading place in the animal cre- 
ation, and gave name to the age as known in geo- 
logical history. 

Among the reptiles of the period were the fol- 
lowing : 

The Plesiosaurus, a swimming saurian, with 
snake-like neck sometimes of forty vertebrae, a 
small head, with slender teeth, a body compact 
and flexible, and provided with small paddles for 
pushing its way through the water; the Ichthyo- 



Il6 THE CREATION. 

saurus (fish-lizard) unlike the foregoing in almost 
every particular, sometimes thirty feet in length, 
with jaws six feet long, set with sabre-like teeth, 
and eyes of enormous size ; the Mosasaurus, the 
sea-serpent of the period, as Dana aptly describes 
it, seventy-five feet in length and provided with 
double rows of saw-like teeth for seizing its prey 
and tearing it; the Pterosaurians (flying reptiles) 
loathsome creatures bearing some resemblance to 
the modern bat; the Labyrinthodont, with the hab- 
its of the frog, but as large almost as a common 
ox ; and the immense creatures, whether bird or 
biped reptile, is yet uncertain, that left their foot- 
prints in great numbers in the red sandstone of the 
Connecticut valley. 

Prof. O. C. Marsh, of Yale College, has also, by 

his untiring industry and enterprise, added 

Marsh's largely to the list of reptiles from the 

discoveries. Mesozoic roc k s in ^g R oc ky Mountain 

region. 

Chief among these are the Holosaurus, similar 
to the Ichthyosaurus, but more serpent-like, and 
sometimes seventy-five feet in length ; the Atlanto- 
saurus, crocodilian in type, but immensely larger 
than the modern alligator ; and a bird he names 
the Hesperornis " essentially a carnivorous swim- 
ming ostrich," which had teeth, and stood full six 
feet high. 



READING THE RECORD. WJ 

There were also great plants in this age, as 
there were in the age preceding ; with an advance 
in number of those belonging to the highest class, 
including the sassafras, hickory, willow beech, and 
poplar. But the reptiles furnished the striking and 
characteristic feature of the period. It was the 
Age of Reptiles. 

The next upward step brings us to the Ceno- 
zoic (recent life), better known as the The Tertiary 
Tertiary period, and distinguished also as (Ao-eof- 
the Age of Mammals. The name " Ter- Mammals). 
tiary " is retained from the early nomenclature, 
when the terms primary and secondary were applied 
to the preceding rock- formations. It has no special 
appropriateness now, but is retained for old ac- 
quaintance sake. 

But the designation, " Age of Mammals," is 
specially appropriate. The mammals, among ani- 
mals, held the leading place. The reptiles, re- 
manded to a subordinate position, declined in size 
and numbers. Among fishes, those with skeletons 
of bone instead of cartillage (introduced in the 
preceding age) had become most numerous, and 
there was a general approach in the animal king- 
dom toward modern types. 

The mammals were of large size, but otherwise, 
in many points like those that live to-day. Among 
those characteristic of the period were the Mam- 



Il8 THE CREATION. 

moth, a gigantic elephant, and the Mastodon, the 
Zeuglodon, bearing some resemblance to the whale 
but with great molar-teeth, and the Dinoceras, a 
large creature, larger than the rhinoceros, and very 
similar in habit. 

Prof. Marsh has laid the scientific world under 
Recent ad- further obligations by additions to this 
our western ^ st taken from the tertiary formations 
territories. f the " Terres mauvaises" (bad lands) in 
our western territories. The list includes the Oro- 
hippus, Miohippus, and their congeners, in which 
Prof. Huxley so confidently traces the lineage of 
the horse. 

The plants of the Tertiary, included all the 
general classes, but the larger proportion 

of were of the second and third, or the 

middle and highest divisions, and ap- 
proached in form and variety those of the present 
time. Many of these, also, were of extraordinary 
size. A fragment of a palm-leaf found in the 
upper Missouri region, must have measured when 
complete, twelve feet in length, and there were 
trees closely related to the giant Sequoias, " big 
trees," of California. The life of the period was 
by no means usurped, however, by plants or ani- 
mals of great size. 

There are, both in Europe and America, exten- 
sive deposits in the rocks of the period, made up 



READING THE RECORD. 1 1 9 

almost wholly of siliceous shells, so minute, it is 
computed by Ehrenberg, that a cubic 
inch contains more than forty thousand n us ^" al 
millions. And the nummulitic limestones 
of Southern Europe and Northern Africa, the same 
of which some of the Egyptian pyramids are built, 
are made up chiefly of the shells of very minute 
animals. The forms of life were even more numer- 
ous than they had been before, and the most in- 
significant among them seems to have filled some 
important place in the economy of the world. 

And, now, one more upward step in the rock 
formations and we come to the A^e of _ 

Quaternary- 

Man, of which there is no need that we Age (Age of 

speak in much detail. The period is 

passing now. Intelligence and moral power, other 

than those concerned in the creation from the first, 

are become potent factors in the life upon the 

earth ; and all the ambitions and hopes of men find 

fields of exercise in the tasks it sets before them, 

and the rewards it holds out to them. 

{The Quaternary Age will be discussed in Lec- 
ture XL] 

Our life history of the earth is now complete. 

We began with its early dawning. We 
found the evidence of plants remaining Review, 
in the graphite mines, where the plants 
themselves had disappeared. We found next the 



120 THE CREATION. 

simplest class of plants in fossil. Next came a 
few, sparingly distributed, which rank in the higher 
class, herbs bearing seed ; and lastly, growing side 
by side with these, the fruit and nut-growing trees. 

We turned, then, to the animal kingdom. Con- 
temporaneous with these varieties of plants we 
found the various classes of the animal world. 
The Protozoan first ; a mere " moving thing," al- 
most destitute of organism, but followed in an up- 
ward scale by the Radiate (coral), the Mollusk 
(shell-fish), the Articulate (insect), and tke Ver- 
tebrate, beginning with the fishes and advancing 
to the reptile, bird, quadruped, and man. Our 
task is done. We have read the record in the 
rocks. 

We have made no attempt, it will be observed, 
to estimate the age of the earth, or to 
& earth * calculate that of any single layer of the 
rocks. It cannot be done, except ap- 
proximately, and then with much uncertainty. 

It is computed it may require a thousand years, 
under ordinary circumstances, to form a bed of 
limestone one foot in depth, and possibly five to 
ten thousand years to form one foot of coal. 

Lyell estimates the accumulations of the Mis- 
sissippi delta at about nineteen inches in a century, 
and that of the Nile mud at less than four inches. 
Dana computes the most rapid growth of coral 



READING THE RECORD. 121 

reefs at one sixteenth of an inch per annum, and 
Le Conte estimates it at one to two feet in a 
century. But all such data are illusive. 

Two beds of rock forming side by side may 
differ in their rates of growth, and the same bed 
may vary from year to year, or century to century. 
It depends on the material at command, and on 
the regularity of the currents by which it is de- 
posited. It is comparatively easy to decide which 
strata are the oldest, by their position or by the 
fossils they contain. But we know nothing defi- 
nite of the time required to form them, nor of 
the time that has elapsed since they were com- 
pacted. 

There are other means of estimating the age of 
the earth, as a whole, as by its temperature and the 
erosive action of water, and yet the best authori- 
ties differ widely on the subject. 

A distinguished astronomer estimates the age 
of the earth since a crust first formed upon it at 
fifty-seven million years. Sir William Thompson 
calculates it at one hundred million years. The 
evolutionists demand more time. They say, what- 
ever may be the necessities of rock formations, 
that a hundred million years is not sufficient for 
the Ascidian to develop into a man. We suspect 
they are correct. But Prof. Proctor would seem to 
satisfy all reasonable demands in this direction, 



122 THE CREATION. 

when he places the age of the earth at four hun- 
dred and fifty million years. But we have said 
enough to indicate the uncertain character of all 
such calculations. We can reach but one sure and 
safe conclusion; that if we estimate the time in 
years, the earth is very old. 



GEOLOGICAL CHART. 



123 



Eras. 


Ages. 


Characteristic Life. 



O 

N 

O 


Quaternary Age, 

or 

Age of Man. 


Periods or Epochs 

of the 

Quaternary. 


Present. 
Terrace. 
Champlain. 
Glacial. 


O 


Tertiary Age, 

or 

Age of Mammals. 


Palm, Magnolia, Myrtle, Fig, Beech, Pop- 
lar, Maple, Oak. 

Infusoria, Oyster, Fishes, Peccary, Masto- 
don, Rhinoceros, Orohippus, Miohippus. 


u 


N 
O 

Ui 

W 


Mesozoic Age, 

or 
Age of Reptiles. 


Cycads, Conifers, Plane-tree, Willow, Sas- 
safras, Holly, Redwood, Cypress. 

Plesiosauras, Ichthyosaurus, Pterodactyl, 
Labyrinthodont, Atlantosaurus, Ammo- 
nite, Hesperornis. 




Carboniferous Age, 

or 
Age of Coal Plants. 


Tree-ferns, Sigillaria, Lepidodendron, Cal- 

amite, Conifers. 
Rhizopods, Corals, Crinoids, Snails, Insects, 

Lizards, Amphibians. 


O 
N 
O 

w 
)-) 

5 


Devonian Age, 

or 
Age of Fishes. 


Ferns, Lycopods, Conifers. 
Corals, Spirifer, Nautilus, Trilobite, 
Fishes (Ganoids and Sharks). 




Silurian Age, 

or 

Age of Mollusks. 


Sea-Weeds (Fucoids). 

Sponge, Coral, Crinoid, Trilobite, 

Mollusks, in great variety. 


u" 
c 

N 

O 

W 


Laurentian Age. 


Sea- Weeds. 
Eozoon. 



Igneous Rocks — Lifeless Period. 



VII. 

Man. 



" God created man in his own image." 

" Still I own 
A love that spreads from zone to zone ; 
No time the sacred fire can smother ! 
Where breathes the man, I hail the brother. 
Man ! how sublime — from heaven his birth — 
The God's bright image walks the earth ! 
And if, at times, his footstep strays, 
I pity where I may not praise." 



VII. 

ORIGIN OF MAN AND UNITY OF THE 
RACE. 

A GENIAL writer of our own time has said : 
" Once the great question with men was, 
Where are we all going to? Now the question of 
question that commands chief attention ngm ' 
is, Where did we all come from ? " And in the 
present state of the public mind it is hardly pos- 
sible to allude to the history of man or his rela- 
tions to the world, but that this question will 
come to the front. 

The old familiar theory is that man was a 
direct and immediate creation of God. Another 
theory is that he has developed, by a process 
called Evolution, out of the lower orders of the 
animal kingdom. The latter theory assumes dif- 
ferent forms, but the one best known, perhaps, is 
that coupled with the name of Charles Darwin, and 
known as " Evolution by Natural Selection." 

There is, first, a difference of opinion among 



128 THE CREATION. 

evolutionists themselves as to the primal origin of 

life; some assuming that life is a pro- 
Doctrine 
of duct of matter in certain conditions, and 

others that at some remote period in 
the earth's history germs of life were introduced, 
out of which all the forms of life have grown. 
Without attempting to settle definitely the ques- 
tion of primal origin, Mr. Darwin's theory, as we 
read it, is this — that after life was started on the 
earth, there were sufficient causes in nature to bring 
out of the first germs all the varieties that have 
since existed. As a single illustration of the prin- 
ciple involved, it is said, that the flipper of the 
whale, the wing of the bird, the fore-leg of the 
quadruped, and the arm of man are essentially the 
same in structure; and each in turn developed out 
of the next lower and preceding type, and that 
similar analogies may be traced in other parts of 
the body ; that function determines form, and that 
the use a member of the body serves determines 
the shape it takes. 

There is no time now to trace the evidence in 
detail for or against this theory. But after a 
somewhat careful consideration of the subject, and 
much that has been said and written upon it, 
we are constrained to say that so far as revealing 
any connection between man and the brutes, the 
doctrine of evolution fails utterly. 



RIG IX OF MAX. 1 29 

Our reasons for such decided statement are 
these : — 

Mr. Darwin's theory proceeds on the assump- 
tion that " nature makes no leaps ; " that Postulate 
the change from one animal or race to of 

Darwinism. 

its immediate follower must be very 
slight. And, therefore, that if two animals differ 
in any considerable degree, it is certain that the 
one did not proceed directly from the other, but 
that there were intermediate links, even though 
we do not find those links and cannot prove that 
such ever existed. 

Now the nearest approach to man is in that 
type of the monkey tribe known as the 
Ape. Mr. Huxley, in a little book en- A e 
titled " Man's Place in Nature," has very 
carefully traced out certain striking resemblances 
between the ape and man. And Prof. Mivart has 
ably supplemented him in his " Man and Apes." 
The brain of the largest anthropoid ape is smaller, 
the chest larger, the lower limbs shorter, the upper 
limbs much longer than in man. The ape can 
walk on two feet like man, though he generally 
goes on four. He can stand quite erect, though 
more inclined to a stooping posture. But while 
it is possible for the ape thus to stand and walk, 
the arrangement of the bones and position of the 
brain plainly indicate that his natural position is 



13° THE CREATION. 

on four feet rather than on two. Such are some 
of the considerations on which the argument for a 
genetic connection between man and the ape are 
based. 

But the theory that there has been a series of 
advances from the lowest animals, through the mon- 
key tribe, culminating in man, is involved in grave 
perplexities, unless we suppose some characteris- 
tic of the animal, though lost to its immediate 
offspring, may be recovered by a remoter genera- 
tion. The highest tribes of monkies do not show 
the closest resemblance to man. The gorilla is 
accounted the highest, or possibly the chimpanzee 
may have equal rank. The baboon and gibbon 
stand lower, and the spider monkey lowest of all 
the old world tribes. But in point of anatomical 
structure, the lower approach man more nearly than 
those that hold the highest rank. For instance, 
man has twelve pairs of ribs and five lumbar ver- 
tebrae. The gorilla has thirteen pairs of ribs and 
three or four vertebrae, while some of the lower 
apes have the same number, both of ribs and ver- 
tebrae as man. Long hair on the head and face, 
resembling that of man, is found in some of the 
lower apes ; never in the highest. In the arrange- 
ment and structure of the teeth, the half-apes re- 
semble man more nearly than the highest species. 
The ape having the frontal shape of the skull most 



ORIGIN OF MAN. 131 

like man ranks fourth in the scale below the go- 
rilla or chimpanzee. In fact there is no regularly- 
ascending series culminating in man, or distinctly 
pointing to him. 

Mr. Darwin admits this anomaly, and calls it 
Reversion, on the same principle, as we 
interpret him, that a child may have the Th ^ doctrine 

1 J of Reversion. 

black eyes of its grandfather though its 
father's eyes are blue and its mother's gray ; and 
that it may show some other resemblance to an- 
cestors still more remote. But this theory as ap- 
plied to anatomical structure, is a direct contradic- 
tion of the principle on which he lays so much 
stress, that evolution by natural selection requires a 
constant advance. 

Moreover, naturalists tell us that in all the 
higher groups of animals their relative 

11 ii- xt Brain of man 

rank is determined by the brain. Now and ape . 
we have the best authority for saying 
that the largest ape's brain measures not more 
than thirty-four and a half inches, while the small- 
est brain of man — with very rare exceptions — meas- 
ures sixty-three inches ; that of man being nearly- 
double that of the ape. And this is the propor- 
tion Mr. Huxley adopts in his comparison. 

There is no animal that comes between these 
two ; and so far as we can ascertain there never 
was an animal whose rank would place it between 



132 THE CREATION. 

them. There is no connecting link living — no trace 
of any in the recent rocks. And now, recalling the 
postulate on which Mr. Darwin's theory proceeds, 
that if animals differ in any considerable degree it 
is certain that one did not proceed directly from 
the other, but that there were several links between 
— here are two animals differing by one half in the 
size of the brain. It is not possible for nature to 
make such a leap, and the one could not, therefore, 
have sprung directly from the other. If there is 
any connection between them it must be through 
intermediate links. But there are no intermediate 
links, and no evidence that such links ever existed. 

Prof. Asa Gray suggests that man did not de- 
scend from the monkey, but that the line 
suggestion. °f development branched farther back. 
But this only makes the possibility of 
tracing man's lineage the more hopeless. 

This, then, is the ground of the statement that 
so far as man is concerned, the doctrine of evolu- 
tion by natural selection, or by the operation of 
merely natural causes, fails utterly and absolutely. 

We are aware that some attempt is made to ex- 
plain the absence of these supposed inter- 

The "Miss- ,. , 

ing Links." mediate types: 

I. It is said that their remains may 

have perished with the lapse of ages. That might 

, be possible, if the monkey had existed in very 



ORIGIN OF MAN. 133 

remote times. But, on the contrary, it is quite a 
recent animal ; the earliest fossils not dating back 
beyond the Cenozoic, or recent rocks. 

II. It is said, again, that some great convul- 
sion of nature, even in recent times, may have de- 
stroyed all or most of the animals existing at the 
time, and these intermediate types may have been 
among them. But there are the most abundant 
fossils of other animals covering the whole of the 
recent period ; so that if higher tribes of monkeys 
or lower tribes of men had existed, it is hardly 
possible that all trace of them could have disap- 
peared. 

III. Another curious and certainly very slender 
assumption is based on the fact that casual men- 
tion is made by some ancient authors, of an island 
called Atlantis; and, since no such island is known 
to-day, it is gravely assumed that it has disap- 
peared in the sea, and that it may have carried 
down the missing links. 

In reply, it may be said: 

1. There is no sufficient evidence that there 

ever was such an island as Atlantis. 

The myth 

Atlantis. There is no mention of it in authentic 
history, and the occasional allusions and 
traditions do not agree as to its locality. 

2. If there ever was such an island, it is by no 
means certain that it has disappeared, for it may 



134 THE CREATION. 

be known to-day by some other name ; as the 
island of Corfu is the Corcyra of two or three 
thousand years ago, and the ancient names of 
some places have been lost beyond recovery. 

3. Suppose there was such an island, and that 
in some great convulsion it did disappear beneath 
the waves, there is still not one shred of proof 
that it carried down man or monkey, or anything 
even remotely allied to either of them. 

And still, on such precarious threads will men 
hang sober arguments to bolster a doubtful cause 
or defend a favorite theory. And Prof. Hseckel, 
the most daring and least reliable of all the prom- 
inent evolutionists, expresses his philosophical dis- 
may, not to say his natural disgust, that intelligent 
men of science will longer doubt the doctrine of 
evolution. 

If, then, man was not developed by natural 
causes out of the inferior animals, whence came he? 

Here we find ourselves compelled to fall back 
on that very ancient document, the opening of the 
book of Genesis, not because it is the only evi- 
dence we have, but because we find the matter 
nowhere else so clearly and so concisely stated. 

" And God said, let us make man in 

The Hebrew 

record. our own image ; and let them have do- 
minion over the fish of the sea, and over 
the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all 



ORIGIN OF MAN. 1 35 

the earth. So God created man in His own image." 
Of man's mastery in the earth and over it, we can 
ourselves bear witness, for that mastery he still re- 
tains. And after all that has been said and writ- 
ten, it must be confessed this is the only theory of 
the origin of man that after each assault and par- 
tial surrender but roots itself the deeper in the 
minds and hearts of men. 

It is worthy of remark that the word " create," 
used in the beginning with reference to the world 
as a whole, is used here with reference to man, 
and that it occurs but once between, and then, as it 
seems, incidentally. Whether we are to understand 
by this, that the creation of man was more a direct 
operation of the divine power than the creation of 
other animals and of the plants, or whether it is 
merely a recurrence of the word to avoid repetition 
of another, we do not attempt to decide. 

But certain it is that in the beginning the world 
is said to have been due to the immediate act of 
the Creator, nothing else intervening. So here it 
is said God created man. It was thus the act of 
God, and the culmination of His plan in the world. 

But right here we encounter another perplexing 
problem. It relates to the different races 
of man. Did they have a common ori- question of 

«i r-\ ^ ^ • r race. 

gin? Our answer must be briet. 

In the first place, all men, whatever their land 



I $6 THE CREATION. 

or origin, have almost the same anatomical struc- 
ture, with similar habits both of body and mind. 
They are subject to the same diseases. They live, 
under like conditions, about the same length of 
time. They all shape implements and make use of 
fire. They all believe in God ; all resort to prayer ; 
all have funeral ceremonies over their dead, and all 
believe in a future life. There are individual ex- 
ceptions, but this is the rule. And that they are all 
of one species is evident from the fact that any two 
races may intermarry, and the increase will go on 
as if each race was confined wholly to itself. 

But there are a variety of races differing in color 
and to some extent in physiognomy. Whence came 
these differences? As they are found divided as to 
geographical locality, it has been suggested, that 
they originated in different sections of the world, 
and sprang from different progenitors. But before 
we make any such assumption it is well to con- 
sider whether climate and habits of life may not 
in process of time, produce these differences, 
though all were of the same family to begin with. 

1. As to geography and clime. In northern 
Europe the characteristic complexion is 

Climatic 

variations, light, and the hair is light and straight : 

witness the Swedes. In southern Europe, 

the characteristic complexion is dark, and the hair 

black with a tendency to curl : witness the French 



ORIGIN OF MAN. 1 37 

and Italians. In the interior of Europe, as in 
Germany, these characteristics are not so marked 
either way. In other words, they are between the 
two extremes, as the locality is between the two 
first-named. Then cross to Arabia and Egypt, and 
we find the complexion still more dark and the 
countenance still more widely different from those 
of the north. And yet there is no doubt that 
these all belong to the same race. The Swede, the 
Frenchman, and the Arab all belong to the Cau- 
casian race. If we go into the interior of Africa 
we shall find people with black skin and woolly 
hair. But on the coast of Mozambique are peo- 
ple about as dark skinned as Africans, with feat- 
ures more like the Arab, while on their heads 
they have a crisply curled or frizzled hair, some- 
thing between the curly hair of southern Europe 
and the wool of Africa. 

2. Then take a single illustration that can be 
traced somewhat easily. There is no people of 
more marked physiognomical expression than the 
Jews — dark complexion, round face, and black hair. 
Moreover, as they rarely intermarry with other peo- 
ple, these features are remarkably well preserved. 
And yet in some of the bitter persecutions that 
befel the Jews centuries ago, some of them took 
refuge in Northern Russia; and though they are 
not believed to have intermarried with others, but 



I38 THE CREATION. 

to be still pure-blooded Jews, there are some among 
them now with red hair and blue eyes. Such 
changes are wrought, in the course of a few gen- 
erations, by climate and condition. And it is evi- 
dent that the variations might be greater still, if 
the time was longer and the change of climate 
and condition yet more radical. 

So, notwithstanding all the speculations on the 
subject, it must be said in all candor, there is no 
sufficient proof, as yet, that there was more than 
one primal pair; but that all men are of one family 
and one blood. 

But even if it should be proved that there were 

more than one primal pair, it does not 

historic invalidate the account given in Genesis, 

race. , . , 

lor since human nature is everywhere 
essentially the same, the record of the one pair 
would serve as an example for the whole. We 
should then say that Adam and Eve were the his- 
toric pair; the ones chosen as representatives of the 
whole.* 

What, then, of the constitution of man ? " So 
God created man in his own image." No one 

* As these pages go to press a volume by Dr. Alexander Win- 
chell appears, entitled " Pre-Adamites," in which the author as- 
sumes, what others had before suggested, that Adam was the progeni- 
tor only of the white race. On the other hand, Dr. E. B. Tylor, 
of London, a very high authority, says recent evidences greatly 
strengthen the probability that all men are of one original stock. 



ORIGIN OF MAN. 1 39 

probably supposes the likeness here to be in physi- 
cal form or appearance, or if in that, not in that 
alone. 

In bodily constitution, man is an animal. He 
is made up of organs and parts having 

Man 

each a specific function. He is flesh and an animal, 
bone and blood ; fed with nutritious food, 
baned with poisons — suffering from neglect, from 
disease or accident, and returning to the dust when 
the life is gone out of him. So far. he is an animal. 
But this is not all of him ; this is not what makes 
him a man as distinguished from an ani- „ . 

& Man has 

mal. He has spiritual faculties, as well also spiritual 

. ...... faculties. 

as animal powers ; and in this is he cre- 
ated in the divine similitude. He has intellect- 
ual faculties of such breadth and strength that no 
one has ever dared to say what achievements he 
might attain ; for in the narrow span of human 
life there is not time to get these powers fairly into 
working order. He has sentiments and impulses 
out of which grow the humanest sympathies and 
the sweetest charities ; and aspirations that lead 
him to holiness of life and to supreme trust in 
the power above that is more than life. All the 
heroes and the martyrs that glorify the pages of 
history go to tell us there is something more in 
man than that which grows out of fleshly tissue 
and bony structure. Admit that there are bold 



140 THE CREATION. 

contrasts and sharp distinctions among men ; one 
man base almost to the level of brutality, and an- 
other self-sacrificing and devoted as man can be, the 
contrast only shows the more clearly, the difference 
between that which is merely brutish and that 
which constitutes the man. So let us understand 
what man is in his natural constitution. Then we 
can trace his history. One broad distinction be- 
tween man and the inferior animal is that the lat- 
ter is controlled by instincts ; the former is the sub- 
ject of his own intelligence. We do not mean that 
man has no instincts, for he has ; or that the ani- 
mal shows no trace of reason, for he does. But 
that the practical limit of reason is soon reached 
in the animal, and then in emergency he falls back 
on his instinct, while in man instinct is soon out- 
grown by the exercise of reason, and to that ex- 
ercise no limit in all experience has ever been ap- 
proached. So marked is this difference between 
the animal and man, that we do not hesitate to 
condemn in the one what we praise without stint in 
the other. The dog droops and dies on the grave 
of his dead master, and we admire his fidelity; but 
it would be an ignoble thing for a man to do. 
When Hamlet in the play leaps into the grave 
of Ophelia, if he were a dog he would crouch 
and perish there. But because he is not a dog, 
but a living soul — with hopes and faith and aspira- 



ORIGIN OF MAN. 141 

tions, he rouses himself from his deep despondency, 
and comes forth to battle yet farther with the stern 
realities of an already overshadowed life. In the 
fact that man was created in the image of God we 
find the explanation, then, of the various powers 
and faculties that exalt him above the animal. 

What, finally, of his history ? 

The same record that tells us he was given 
dominion over the earth, saves us farther 

fa History 

on a picture of his life in a ''garden," or of 

in "a land of loveliness," as some authors 
render it, wherein, to the outward seeming, was 
everything necessary for the sustenance and pros- 
perity of human life. But a strange blight soon 
came over this auspicious opening, for these favored 
subjects disobeyed the law of God and fell ; and 
thence came pains and penalties they had never 
known before. 

And, now, how came this strange event about? 

There is nothing more natural in the experience 
of the human race. It was the be^in- 

& Duty 

ning of that long conflict which is as old vs. 

as human nature, and destined possibly 
to continue as long as man dwells upon the earth 
— " the conflict of duty with desire." 

Desire is here presented in the figure of the 
serpent. The serpent has no power of speech or 
other means of communicating thought to man — 



142 THE CREA TIOAT. 

if thought it ever had. But nothing is so sugges- 
tive of the serpent that comes upon us unawares, 
as that subtle something we call temptation, which 
is rooted in the very nature of every moral being, 
or every being that takes account of right and 
wrong. And it was because human nature was so 
constituted, that the conflict began in Eden with 
such consequences as are written in the biblical 
account. Eden was a state of innocence. That 
was what especially distinguishes it in our minds 
to-day. It was a state of ignorance as well. This 
is a point we are apt to overlook ; that human 
education as yet was scarce begun. There was no 
history, there was no observation, there was no 
experience of human life ; none of the agencies by 
which men grow and learn. There is danger that 
in our contemplation of this subject we shall for- 
get one of these potent facts, in our admiration 
for the other. 

They were created in innocence and in ignor- 
„. , ance; innocent as the little child, which 

Primal 

condition of is unconscious of immodesty or any sense 
of shame, though utterly unclad ; ignorant 
of any such thing as good and evil, or that there 
was any difference between them. So much the 
record implies, in the very plainest terms. But in 
them was born a disposition to inquire and learn ; 
a spirit of curiosity, if you choose to call it so ; 



ORIGIN OF MAN. 143 

an inclination to pry into the hidden things about 
them. 

Put your child, who has not yet learned to stand 
in awe of you, into a room in which is every- 
thing that can amuse and entertain, and say to 
him, "You may have free range here, except in 
that drawer; there is something you must not 
see." That is the very first place he will go to. 
That is human nature. And it is not a vicious 
disposition. It is the spirit of inquiry and dis- 
covery, which, to whatever strange excesses and sad 
results it may lead us sometimes, is the key to all 
progress. 

The first pair in Eden were warned before the 
act, it is said, but there is nothing that teaches 
like experience. And in the absence of any chance 
to observe effects in others, a warning is but a 
theory that lacks confirmation. The little child at- 
tracted by the burning taper, tries to seize it with 
his hand. The mother warns him a hundred times, 
and still he does not understand what harm there 
can be in it. Let him get his hand into the blaze 
but once, and it satisfies him for a lifetime. 

In this we have an example in different form of 
the experience that came to man in paradise, and 
has been a regular inheritance of each generation 
and of every human being from then till now ; and 
what did the first pair learn from this experience? 



144 THE CREATION. 

I. That there was a Power above them to which 
„ , they were in subjection. 

Results J J 

of 2. That there was such a thing in 

expene . j lurnan y^ as ^ u ^y^ anc i obligation, and 

responsibility. 

But that which most forcibly impressed itself 
upon them, and that is magnified in the account, 
was that there was a penalty attached to disobe- 
dience. And they learned at once, therefore, the 
advantage of a strict observance of the divine law 
in relation to human life. And thus it was that, 
from their first estate of ignorance, their " eyes 
were opened," and they knew good and evil — 
though from their estate of innocence they fell. 

Man was turned out of Eden, it is said. And 
who, from his childish innocence has come to be 
conscious of base desires and evil purposes, has not 
realized something very like this in his own ex- 
perience ? Who that goes on in evil ways does 
not sometimes feel himself estranged from God and 
all pure and holy things, while his own conscience 
is the watchful guardian, with flaming sword, that 
keeps the gate. Adam was not to be an idle spec- 
tator of the world ; his task was set " to dress 
and keep the garden " when he was first placed 
therein. And so to work is the mission of man 
on the earth, and always was. And while this, in 
obedience to intelligence and law, may be only a 



ORIGIN OF MAN. 145 

delight, we know full well how indolence and vice 
and crime multiply the hardships and penalties of 
life. Adam was the first to pass through this ex- 
perience, and so he stands for the human race 
throughout the Bible record ; but he was not the 
last. 

Every child born into this world repeats, with 
more or less completeness, the experience 

k x Human 

of this far-off progenitor. He has his experience 
little experience of Eden to begin with, repea 
when in unconscious innocence he knows nothing 
of evil or of good ; nothing of duty, responsibility, 
or obligation. He soon passes that, for he has an 
inheritance of evil tendencies, whatever may have 
been the fact at first. 

He soon passes the early stage, we repeat — 
" dies to innocence." And the long and old-time 
conflict between duty and desire begins, with such 
variety of results as we witness in human life. 

And is every human life a failure, then ? Nay, 
not so. There was an Eden back of us ; TT 

Human life 

there is a paradise beyond. The first not 

. 1 , , a failure. 

was given us as our inheritance ; the 
other we must win. The penalty that followed 
the first disobedience was offset in some degree by 
the knowledge that it gave of the law that guards 
and limits the conduct of man. And so with that 
penalty a new power entered into life, by which 



I46 THE CREATION. 

man might recover that which he had lost. Mere 
innocence at the best is but a passive state, with- 
out merit or reward ; but when refined by trial 
and experience it assumes the character of virtue, 
it is a positive force in life. And while innocence 
is the essential quality of the primal Eden — heroic 
virtue is the essential feature in the paradise that 
is to be. 

The first, we repeat, is an inheritance ; the other 
must be earned. Men inherit wealth, and, as often 
quite as otherwise, they squander it ; but that 
which they have gained by slow degrees and per- 
sistent industry, has a value, and serves a purpose 
it could never do without. 

So Eden was given to man : he fell. xA.nother 
lies before and beckons him in all the 
Conclusion, better moments of his life. And in the 
Providence that is over him, sin will lose 
its charm when his eyes are fully open, and sorrow 
will have done its work in chastening the desires. 
And as out of conflict cometh victory, and out of 
struggle a more perfect life, so by slow degrees 
and sometimes painful steps — God calling him upon 
the one hand and duty urging him upon the other 
— by every onward movement and every upward 
impulse, he shall come again to Eden by and by, 
and the last estate of man will be better than the 
first. 



I 



VIII. 

Civilization-Cain and 
Abel. 



"Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the 
ground. . . . And it came to pass when they were in the field, 
that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him." 

"The first step in civilization was achieved by conflict, and 
every succeeding step of deep and lasting import has been 
achieved in the same way. It is the method of history." — 
F. H. Hedge. 

"Effort is the condition of achievement and conflict the 
price of victory." 



I 



VIII. 
PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 

SOCIETY has its beginnings in a state of bar- 
barism, and, if we may trust history, tends from 
time to time to relapse into its primitive condi- 
tion. By barbarism we do not mean savage life, 
but a condition intermediate between the savage 
and the civilized state — a condition in which men 
have all the instinct, intelligence, and propensities 
of men without education or systematic training in 
any of them. 

Place a child, if it were possible, away from 
all associates, give him shelter, food, and _. 

' » Three 

drink, without care or effort on his own grades of 

, .... society. 

part, and never excite the evil propen- 
sities that slumber in him, and he will grow up a 
respectable barbarian, having little disposition for 
either good or evil. Take another and surround 
him from the first, with circumstances that tend 
constantly to rouse the passions and baser pro- 
pensities, and he will grow up a savage, like our 
Indian. Then take a third and surround him with 



15° THE CREATION. 

the appliances of cultured life ; give him books and 
schools and intelligent companionship, and he will 
become civilized. These represent three distinct 
conditions of human life, and we readily see out of 
what surroundings and under what influences they 
severally grow. 

In saying that society begins in a state of bar- 
barism, we mean simply that humanity 

Primitive A . , r . . r 

barbarism. comes upon the stage of life in a state 
of nature, without training or instruction, 
and that it may so continue, with little knowledge 
beyond that necessary for supplying the most im- 
perative wants. But the very simplest life finds 
means of drill and tuition in its course ; means that 
cannot escape it, and that it cannot fail in some 
degree to heed. 

Man, set down in the world without any knowl- 
edge of his surroundings, and without the 

Learning ° ° 

by assistance of a teacher, would soon be- 

experience. . c , , r , 

come conscious ol hunger and find means 
to satisfy the desire ; and if the climate were 
severe, would not be long in providing some pro- 
tection against the inclemencies of the weather. 
Then, as appetite would keep him on the alert, he 
would begin to exercise his ingenuity; would decoy 
animals and trap them, and anon would fashion 
weapons for slaying them. All these come in the 
course of nature, and require no other motives 



PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 151 

than those which nature herself supplies. Then, 
following on in the same direction, by an easy and 
natural process, without developing much of either 
good or evil quality, he might come at length to 
keep flocks and herds that he would drive from 
place to place, as pastures failed, and still be noth- 
ing but a barbarian ; having developed neither the 
vicious qualities that make the savage, nor the 
higher traits that lead to the civilized condition. 

While, therefore, we do grave injustice to hu- 
manity to suppose it came up primarily from a 
savage state, we do but follow out the plain sug- 
gestions of nature and reason alike, when we as- 
sume that the early condition of human society 
was that of barbarism. 

This was clearly the condition of the tribes and 
men of which we read in the remotest -,,,.. 

Barbarism of 

histories, or in the history of the earliest primeval 
times. Their chief dependence was on 
their flocks, and they pitched their tents from time 
to time where the pastures were the best. So 
long as men confine themselves closely to this 
kind of life, moving quietly and subsisting on the 
spontaneous productions of the earth, together with 
what their flocks may yield, they will not develop 
rapidly either the baser or the better qualities; 
their growth or change will not be marked either 
way. But if they come to subsist by plunder, 



152 THE CREATION. 

added to the chase, they rapidly degenerate in a 
moral sense, and are so much farther removed 
from civilization. 

And right here, we incline to believe, is one 
secret of our ill success in civilizing the 
question. 11 Indian. We forget the step that lies be- 
tween the state in which we find him 
and that to which we would introduce him. The 
Indian is a savage and not a mere barbarian. If 
you would civilize the Indian and not exterminate 
him, do not think to call him from the wigwam 
and the chase to the sickle and the plough. The 
transition is too abrupt, and the change too abso- 
lute. But assign him a tract of country sufficient 
for flocks to roam over and gather their living 
from the native products of the soil, and the 
change from his former state will not be so great 
but that he will inure to it, and then it will be 
practicable to take the other step. 

But to resume our subject of discourse. If we 
had no written testimony on the subject we should 
reasonably conclude, from what we know of hu- 
man nature, that the early condition of society 
was that which we have defined as barbarous ; 
about equally removed from civilization on the one 
hand and from savage life upon the other. And 
now, in pursuing this subject, we encounter what 
seems a paradox or contradiction. 



PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 153 



Civilized life is unquestionably the highest 
state ; and vet the very first step out of _ 

•* J A The paradox 

barbarism, in the direction of civilization, of 

leads to disputes and war. That is to 
say, the change from one condition to the other 
involves the rights of property in land, about which 
men and nations have been wont to quarrel, cer- 
tainly ever since nations had any recognized exist- 
ence. 

And here we shall find a convenient and forci- 
ble illustration in the Bible story of Cain and 
Abel. " And it came to pass that when they 
were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel his 
brother and slew him." 

Cain and Abel, representatives of the early race, 
were doubtless keepers of flocks and _, . , „, 

L Cam and Abel 

herds, as most primitive people were, as general 
and as many in remoter sections of the 
world are to-day. They represent the nomadic 
tribes, having no permanent abodes, but moving 
tents instead. 

In process of time, however, Cain grew weary of 
this kind of life and turned his attention to cul- 
tivated fields. But Abel, not sharing this disposi- 
tion, was still content to rove about and live by 
his flocks. So much we may gather from the ac- 
count of the religious offering that each one brought. 

Abel may be accounted what we should now call 



154 THE CREATION. 

a conservative; thought things well enough as they 
were, and was possibly annoyed at Cain's sugges- 
tion or desire for change. Cain, on the other hand, 
was a radical in a primitive sort of way ; thought 
he could improve upon existing methods and 
devise a better way of life, than to wander always 
homeless, in search of fresh pastures. 

And here comes in the fact so paradoxical, that 
that which tends to improvement, in its first in- 
ception tends oftentimes to violence. 

While all men wander at their will, and no 
„ ,. . one interferes to obstruct the way, be- 

Conditions J 

of cause all are equal, and no one's rights 

civilization. . . . r 

are trampled on, there is no cause of 
quarrel regarding land or territory. But the mo- 
ment one sets himself to establish a fixed abode, 
which he must do to have cultivated fields — not a 
tent that he will move next week or even the 
coming year, but a permanent abiding place — he 
must have a little territory to himself. He must 
become a landed proprietor ; must assume the right 
to certain lands and claim them as his own. He 
builds a fence, digs a ditch, or otherwise marks the 
boundary of his premises, and demands that other 
people shall respect his right. 

Here is the root and beginning of all the dis- 
puted titles that occupy so much the attention of 
our courts. One man claims a certain tract of land 



PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 1 55 

and others dispute his right. But this is the re- 
sult of a condition that is inevitable, if 
society is ever to advance beyond its tit^^nd 
primitive level. There can be no real 
civilization, nothing above barbarism, without es- 
tablished homes ; and there can be no fixed abodes, 
or highly cultivated fields, without lines or boun- 
daries beyond which the public has no right to 
trespass. 

Here, then, we have the cause of the first quar- 
rel recorded in human history. And it 
has more than a personal significance. It Cause ° f 

L ° quarrel. 

illustrates a principle that is far-reaching 
and comprehensive, and is applicable to every age 
and every people. Abel would not consent to the 
restriction of pasturage implied in Cain's claim to 
certain lands. On the other hand, Cain did not 
want Abel's cattle driven across his fields. They 
met and quarrelled, and in the strife that followed 
Abel was slain. 

The world has long been in the habit of regard- 
ing Cain as a depraved and desperate 

r Supposed char- 

character, and Abel as quite the reverse; acterofCain 
but there is no evidence either way, 
except in the result of this encounter. And this 
result was only what has been repeated so often 
since, and what is repeated still before our eyes, 
that the cruder types of society and life give way 



156 THE CREATION. 

before the advance of higher and better types, 
even at the cost of violent means. Both men are 
represented as bringing offerings or sacrifices, one 
of the fruit of the field, the other of the firstlings 
of his flock, that is, each such as he had ; which 
shows the one a shepherd and the other a tiller of 
the soil. And so far, in a moral sense, there is no 
difference between them. 

But whatever the merits or demerits of either 
man, and whatever the tendency of the 

murderer change in men's pursuits, from the bar- 
condemned. , - , . ... , . 

barous toward the civilized, Cam is repre- 
sented as condemned to a career of bitterness and 
fear — of public execration and self-reproach. 

And does not history continually repeat itself 
in this? The slaying of a fellow-being, save in the 
extremest case, marks a man in society forever. 
The law proscribes him and pursues him, and even 
though he escape judicial sentence, we think of 
him as a murderer still. The hand of every man 
is against him, and he wanders for a time at least, 
a fugitive and vagabond in the earth. It was so 
then ; it is so now, and will be so as long as men 
prize life above everything they possess besides. 

These Old Testament stories are wonderfully 
life-like and real, if read with some exercise of rea- 
son. 

Cain went to another country to live. It is not 



PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 1$? 

reasonable to suppose, after what had happened, 
that he could have lived among the 

" lne 

friends and followers of Abel — if he had migration of 
followers. And therefore, of necessity, he 
withdrew to another land, and thus effected the 
separation of the human family into two classes, in 
respect to their employments. This change was 
indeed a necessity if Cain was to persevere in the 
changed mode of life he had chosen. If he was 
not to go back to the barbarian level, he must 
have a section of country to himself. It was as 
much a necessity to the one class as to the other. 
Those who adopted agriculture could not prosper 
in a country given up to pasturage ; and those who 
roved about with flocks and dwelt in tents could 
not live in a thickly populated community, where 
the best lands were occupied and tilled, any more 
than the Mexican vaquero could keep his numer- 
ous herds in Connecticut to-day. The one kind of 
society and life inevitably pushes the other out, 
and they must dwell apart. 

The event, therefore, of the first murder de- 
rives an additional significance from the 
fact that it represents to us " not merely ^ oral of 

1 J the story. 

a contest between two angry men, but 
between two types or degrees of civilization." 

And now, leaving these typical characters for 
the time, let us inquire into some of the effects 



158 THE CREATION. 

upon the human race, of this tendency to outgrow 
or rise above the habits and modes of the bar- 
barian. 

Although the idea generally prevails that noma- 
„,-, , die life is favorable to physical strength 

The better l J to 

qualities and valiancy in battle, all history and ob- 

win. . . T 

servation go to show the contrary. It is 
the more educated and the better disciplined that 
win the day, in any but the most unequal con- 
tests. That degree of civilization which best ad- 
vances the interests and attainments of men, at the 
same time best defends them against the assaults 
and devices of all inferior grades. 

In the middle ages, in Europe, when people 
were divided into tribes and feudal clans, their lead- 
ers, by the ill-requited labor of the masses, built 
great castles on such points as were easily defen- 
sible ; and then, whatever depredations they might 
commit on the community without, tjiey were al- 
ways safe in these strong and inaccessible retreats ; 
because an army, however numerous, could make 
no head against the massive walls with such weap- 
ons as were in existence. 

But a German chemist, quietly experimenting in 

his laboratory, invented an explosive sub- 
Gunpowder J 

and stance since known as gunpowder ; and 
straightway these robber strongholds be- 
came untenable. They could withstand an attack 



PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. I $9 

with slings and arrows and an occasional catapult, 
but not a cannonade. And to-day all over central 
and southern Europe are the wrecks of these old 
castles, telling their pregnant story of a condition 
of society that was but is no more. Gunpowder 
often serves an evil purpose, but it was a contri- 
bution of science at the first, which rendered a 
most important service to society, because it de- 
livered the multitude from the control and depre- 
dations of a class of men who lived by plunder, 
and regarded no man's rights save their own. 
Here the contest was between intelligent invention 
and brute force ; between the castle builder and 
the powder maker. And though the stronger may 
at first be the latter, the former in the end will 
win. 

Again, this conflict is sometimes between mere 
mental activity and moral force. And here under 
ordinary circumstances the latter bears the palm ; 
for while a mere adventurer may have dash — may 
be reckless and even desperate, it is only the man 
of moral courage who is really brave. This has a 
good illustration, as we think, in the contest of the 
Roundheads and Cavaliers of England in the time 
of Charles I. ; for the question was substantially, 
whether the people had any rights that the king 
was in duty bound to consider. The royal troops 
were better fed, better armed, and better mounted 



l6o THE CREATION. 

than their opponents, but it was Cromwell's steady 
discipline, and the moral purpose of his men, that 
won at Naseby and Marston Moor. 

So we might go through history ; but we only 
wish to indicate on this point, the general proposi- 
tion, that the higher aim and purpose, if steadily 
pursued, wins against the meaner; and before any 
measure that tends to develop and subserve the 
interest of the human race, that which hinders it 
must fall. 

In the case of Cain and Abel, the one who 
would hold men to a nomadic life, in which no 
great advancement could be made, fell before him 
who had devised a better way. Cain's way was 
better because in its course lay all the possible 
achievements of the world — as we shall see. Fol- 
lowing out his ideal, he not only tilled the ground, 
but he built a city also, which is not said of any 
man before his time — and this witnessed a farther 
advance of human progress ; for it is in the city or 
in the larger community that civilization attains its 
best estate. 

What no man can do alone, many men may do 

together. Hence the peculiar associations 

Best *» r 

condition of and dependencies of city life. 

If a family make their home apart 
from the busy world, on some by-way, or in some 
secluded spot remote from neighborship, they may 






PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. l6l 

have advantages in their fixed abode they could not 
if they moved about like the gypsies from day to 
day, but cannot have the best opportunities. As 
to schools, and church, and society, and trade, they 
live at a disadvantage. These can be had only 
when people dwell in near communities, and where 
whatever any man does in the way of business is a 
matter of interest to his neighbor and the general 
public, since the welfare of the whole is in some 
measure dependent upon each. 

It is true, that a state of comparative isolation 
has fewer temptations than where the associations 
are more intimate. It is true, that with great op- 
portunities for good come great inducements to 
evil ways. But the office of opportunity, and the 
end of true culture in a man, is to make him 
strong. We should deem that bodily exercise of 
little practical value which only enlarged the ca- 
pacity of the stomach without increasing the physi- 
cal strength. And so the opportunities which a 
better condition of life brings to a man are of little 
profit, unless he is man enough to make them in- 
strumentalities of good. 

By the combination of means and the union 
of efforts which are rendered practicable 
in the city or in the larger communities, lvls * on of 
invention and progress go on as they 
could not, were each man compelled to eke his 



1 62 THE CREATION. 

own living from the soil, or derive it from the 
chase, or from wandering flocks, in the condition 
of nomadic life. Some men must be spared this 
kind of labor, that their thoughts may be given to 
other things, else the world would always move on 
the primitive plain of simple uncultured life, and 
little progress could be made. 

Till men are divided up into trades and profes- 
sions, each giving his time and thought to some 
particular line or department of industry, there can 
be no great advancement, and society does not rise 
above a semi-barbarous condition. And there must 
be somewhere and at the hands of some one a 
starting-point for all improvements. 

Hence, among the descendants of this tiller of 
the ground and first builder of a city, we find 
Tubal-Cain, the " instructor of every artificer in 
brass and iron." And Jubal the " father of such as 
handle the harp and organ." Here is the beginning 
of all mechanic arts, and the root of all improve- 
ments that have since been made ; and here the 
beginning of instrumental music, whatever form or 
fashion it may have since assumed. For whatever 
advances have yet been witnessed in the various 
arts, even by the present generation, from the ruder 
implements of frontier life, to the most finished work 
of the completest mechanism or the highest art, 
all must have had somewhere a beginning ; and the 



PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 1 63 

condition of society at the time of that beginning, 
must have been such as to foster investigation in 
some degree, and promote invention and discovery. 

This condition is best attained, as we have seen, 
in a large community, where the circumstances per- 
mit or demand a division of labor; so that while 
one works with his hands, another works with his 
brain, and a third in part employs them both ; 
and thus the whole realm of nature is explored, 
her secrets are found out, and the forces she holds 
in trust appropriated to the progress of the world. 
Everything of material creation is laid under con- 
tribution to this one great end — the advancement 
of the human race. And under the impetus given 
by this means to human life, it assumes a new 
significance and stands out more boldly among the 
works of God, as that for which all things else 
were made, and which by the very extent of its 
possibilities gives indication of other than earthly 
origin and destiny. 

But this view of life, when reduced to its ele- 
ments, forces us back upon the first con- Return 
dition. The first step toward this ad- upon the first 

... ... condition. 

vanced community is the permanent abid- 
ing-place for the family ; but the family and the 
fixed abode necessitate the right of ownership in 
the soil, and the moment you admit the right of 
any one to claim one acre of land as his own, that 



164 THE CREATION. 

moment you limit the extent of territory over 
which any one may wander at his will. And that 
is what Cain and Abel quarrelled about. 

It is hardly probable that either of these men 
had any adequate conception of the tendency and 
ultimate result of what he did or attempted to 
undo. But one of them at least, had an ideal of 
something different from what he saw and what he 
had known in the world. 

The fact, however, that has fixed the attention, 
from the earliest record of this occur- 

Violence a 

condition of rence until now, is that violence and 

advancement. , , , . , , . , 

death came thus early in human experi- 
ence from the antagonistic ideas and tendencies of 
men. But the fact appears alike in nature and in 
human life, that when we foster the good we give 
harbor to the bad. 

The labor that prepares the soil for the wait- 
ing grain, fits it as well for the readier growth of 
weeds. The same stream which, properly directed, 
obediently turns your mill-wheel, also breaks some- 
times beyond its banks and spoils your fields. The 
vapor that lights your dwelling so conveniently and 
so brilliantly, if left to escape unwittingly, brings 
death where but yesternight it brought light and 
gladness. In such close proximity are the evil and 
the good. It depends on how we use what nature 
gives us or what our industry achieves, whether it 



PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 1 65 

prove a blessing or a curse. It depends on what 
use we make of life, whether its possession is a 
penalty or privilege. 

Here were two boys, nourished at the same 
breast, going out into the world, which we should 
think was wide enough for both ; and because they 
had different views and aims in life, the bosom of 
the virgin earth was stained with fraternal blood. 

A fearful fact it is ; but it illustrates the world's 
method of advance. All along the stream of time, 
from then till now, conflict has preceded victory. 
No great achievement is ever cheaply won. No 
great advance is ever made except at some great 
cost. By violence, civilization was given its first 
great impulse in the world ; by violence most of 
its great victories have been won. What then ? 
shall we accept this method as the only one, and 
pursue it still ? Shall we go about to kill a man 
when we would improve the world ? 

Let us keep in mind the double or conflicting 
tendencies in man. He starts out in life when left 
alone, a barbarian. He begins life in his best 
estate an untutored child, with possibilities both of 
evil and of good ; and on the training and associa- 
tions more than on his native inclinations, depend 
the life he will lead. Ignorance and brutality will 
fight for life. They will resist encroachments even 
by those who seek their good. And when these 



1 66 THE CREATION. 

have made great advances, it is rare that their hold 
is loosed except by something at least approaching 
violence. But in the child, the better qualities 
yield as readily to the influences around, as the 
worse. Now, suppose we begin the education of 
the child by other than harsh means of govern- 
ment. There is where his education begins as per- 
tains to human rights. 

Then think how important a part violence has 
always played in the education of the world. The 
rod in the home and the school. Men went out 
into the world, with the idea of the necessity of 
compulsion, wherever one mind or power was supe- 
rior to another. The thought was not to reason 
and persuade, but to subjugate. 

We have passed, let us hope, the earlier stage 

of civilization and are already trying dif- 

Possibiiity of f ere nt means to accomplish the great 

change. 

purposes of life. Violence is in good 
measure put away from the home. It is being 
banished by degrees from the public schools. It 
has been successfully attempted but recently in the 
settlement of a national dispute. The question, 
therefore, as to whether the method of improve- 
ment and reform can be permanently changed, is 
simply a question as to whether a nation can be 
subjected to the same rules as an individual. 

If evil maintains still the master hand, then 



PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 1 67 

there is no advancement except by violent means, 
for evil is stubborn and will resist. But if the bet- 
ter nature shall gain control, if the ideal becomes 
the real Christian life, then by easier grades and 
surer steps progress will hold its course. Reason 
will take passion's place, and advancement in the 
civilization of the world will be secured without 
the effusion of a brother's blood. 

Here our discussion properly ends. 

But since a principle once established finds con- 
tinual illustration in history and in our 
observation of the world, so there are u S1 iaiy 

' questions. 

two or three reflections that come in 
place at this point. 

The first relates to a great advance that has 
recently been made in the direction of civilization ; 
and the other to a certain tendency toward a re- 
trograde movement. 

1. One of the greatest steps ever taken toward 
a Christian civilization was in the settle- „ , 

Settlement 

ment of the " Alabama Claims," in 1873, of "Alabama 
when two of the leading nations of the 
earth — both numerous and powerful — having an 
occasion of war between them, came together by 
their representatives, with a third party having no 
practical interest at stake, and with his aid, ad- 
justed and settled their cause of quarrel without 
resort to any violent means. 



1 68 THE CREATION. 

2. The other case relates to what is known as 
the Communal principle — the theory that 

Communism x L y 

aretrogres- ownership of property should be common, 
or the title vested in the state. This is 
variously represented by the Socialists of Germany, 
the Nihilists of Russia, the Communists of France, 
and a nondescript class of reformers in our own 
country. 

Whatever merits may be alleged of the sys- 
tem as a whole, it is very certain that the general 
adoption of the communal principle would be a 
return toward primitive barbarism. Not a return 
to it, but a step in that direction. For communism 
pure and simple was the original condition. 

The time was when there was no such thing 
as personal ownership of land. And territory was 
probably claimed by tribes, or by individual leaders 
for tribes, before ownership of the soil was recog- 
nized as an individual right. This primitive state 
of things is still retained in a measure in some 
European countries. 

In parts of Russia, according to a recent French 

Communal writer on " Primitive Property," the vil- 

property in j e Qr commune owns the land. To 

Russia and ° 

Switzerland, each adult is allotted a portion on which 
he may work and get his living, paying a certain 
percentage into the public treasury, though he can 
never possess the land in fee simple. He cannot 



PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 1 69 

sell it, and there may be from time to time a re- 
division. 

In certain cantons of Switzerland, the commune 
possesses the land, and is responsible for roads, 
schools, and police. Each head of a family is en- 
titled to garden-ground enough for vegetables, fruit, 
and flax or hemp for household use. He is also 
entitled to the pasturage of two cows in the moun- 
tain meadows, and wood from the common forest. 
And for these privileges he pays a definite sum 
into the public treasury. And while to many peo- 
ple this seems at a distance, quite an Arcadia, the 
effect may be seen in the small accumulations of 
wealth in those cantons and the almost entire lack 
of individual enterprise. 

The truth is, the moment we take from the in- 
dividual the right of ownership in the 
Conclusion, soil, that moment we take from him the 
chief incentive to productive industry. 
And taking from him the personal advantage of 
his own skilled labor, is taking away the incentive 
to do the best work. 

The idea of a state of society in which all men 
shall be equal in point of ownership, whether a 
man is industrious or indolent — whether he is 
skilled or unskilled, is purely visionary and prac- 
ticably impossible. There may be grave inequali- 
ties and serious faults in society as it exists at 



170 THE CREATION. 

present. Merit may not always be adequately re- 
warded, and impracticable genius may often find 
itself distanced by persistent mediocrity ; but the 
disorder is not to be remedied by a defiance of 
the very first principles of justice or a disregard of 
the rules that govern all intelligent competition. 
And the best state of society to which we can 
hope to attain is that in which every man may 
profit by his own industry, his own intelligence, 
and his own enterprise as well. 



IX. 



Failure of Primeval 
Society. 



" The wickedness of man was great . . . And the earth was 
filled with violence." 

" Knowest thou not all germs of evil 

In thy heart await their time ? 

Not thyself, but God's restraining, 

Stays their growth of crime." 

— Whittier. 

" One mischief entered, brings another in ; 
The second pulls a third, the third draws more, 
And they for all the rest set ope the door ; 
Till custom takes away the judging sense 
And to offend scarce, seems an offence." 



IX. 

FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 

THE first experiment of human society ended 
in disaster. Such is the written testi- 
mony — such the not unreasonable infer- nature 
ence to be drawn from what we know of 
human nature, when left comparatively to its own 
suggestion and direction. Education is a plodding 
process. Human wisdom is a thing of slow growth, 
and in the most favorable conditions has but a 
partial following. 

The boy left to choose his own companions 
and follow his own inclinations goes to ruin. The 
patient watchfulness of parents and faithfulness of 
teachers do not always suffice to secure a differ- 
ent result. 

The infancy of the race was much the same in 
many points as that of the individual, and must be 
accordingly considered. 

Left first to unguided inclination, it showed a 
facility in evil growth not manifested in its ten- 
dency toward better things. The savage outran 



174 THE CREATION. 

the saintly qualities in the earliest development of 

the race ; in the first changes from the 

rowt o barbarian level upon which, as shown in 

a preceding lecture, society began. Nor 

was this fact an abnormal one in human life. All 

along the line of history it appears that the evil 

in man, if not most potent, has shown itself of 

quickest growth. 

How many of the discoveries and inventions of 
men were made to serve some evil purpose before 
they were turned to good account. The discovery 
of iron, with the method of reducing it, opens per- 
haps the widest field of useful industry in the 
whole history of the world. Strike that from the 
sum of human achievement, and nine tenths of all 
our machinery and useful implements goes with 
it. And yet the sword was shapen before the 
ploughshare, and men learned more deadly ways 
of fighting before they learned better methods of 
cultivating the soil, or of appropriating human skill 
and labor. And even to this day it depends en- 
tirely upon the use we make of any new discovery, 
whether it prove a blessing or a curse. 

These reflections are in some sense preparatory 
to what we shall have to say in this discourse, 
of the flood, by which primitive society came to 
its disastrous end. To make our way clear we 
must consider the condition to which society had 



FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 1 75 

actually come, at the time of this extraordinary 
event. 

Both poetry and tradition are given to repre- . 
sentinsr the early existence of man as a _ 

° J Romance 

golden age of purity and innocence — of of 
prosperity and peace. The story of Eden, 
as interpreted in the lecture on man, showed him 
as having a golden day of innocence to begin 
with, but falling early into disobedience and rap- 
idly into strife. And, alas, for poetry and imagina- 
tion — for tradition and romance, the earliest traces 
we find in fossil, of man upon the earth, are as- 
sociated with implements of war; as if one of the 
first things men learned to do was to fall into 
deadly quarrels, and then fight them out. 

But this need not surprise us when we are told 
that the second man, whose name comes _ , 

Early 

down to us, was a fratricide. The story condition of 
that the fossils tell us give an air of 
plausibility as well as probability to this account. 

And we might readily conceive without any 
definite record, to what condition early society 
would be likely to come, with such a beginning as 
Adam made, and such a following as Cain ; and if 
we choose to trace the matter farther, we shall 
find an indication in the wild song of vengeance 
and defiance that Lamech addressed to his wives. 

We are not entirely unprepared, after this re- 



Ij6 THE CREATION. 

view, for the statement that " the wickedness of 
man was great, and the earth was filled with vio- 
lence." Humanity seems to have started on a 
downward grade. 

But is human nature, then, constitutionally de- 
praved to such extent that the evil in- 
depravity. evitably overbalances the good ? No ; 
but the evil is of far the quicker growth. 
Plant a garden, and leave it to itself, or without 
careful husbandry, and the weeds will choke out all 
the better plants. Recalling an illustration used 
before, the boy left to himself develops a readier 
affinity for evil than for good. A man may sink 
to the level of the savage more easily than he can 
rise to that of the philosopher or the saint. A 
youth may make his way to profligacy in far less 
time than he can fit himself for important and use- 
ful service in the world. And the same reasoning, 
we repeat, will apply with equal force to men in 
the combinations of social life. Society but ex- 
presses the sum of the influence and tendencies of 
the individuals composing it. 

On this point we quote the substance of a 
striking paragraph from Dr. Hedge. The first 
society, committed to undisciplined instincts and 
native passion, without education, without experi- 
ence, without ideals or examples before them, and 
with no authority but brute force, would almost in 



FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. I J J 

evitably fail for lack of moral resources ; for moral 
ideas, and therefore moral safeguards and defences, 
are of slower growth. 

Consider the situation of that primeval society. 
We may easily conceive, from what we 

* r 1 i Primeval 

know of human nature, now soon some soc j e t y 
sort of ambition or selfish desire would 
spring up among men. Ambition would breed jeal- 
ousy ; jealousy revenge ; revenge violence and war. 
And this course of development of human passion 
would be inevitable, till men had learned to think 
soberly, to reason rightly, and to trace with some 
sort of logical sequence, their acts to their causes 
on the one hand, and to their consequences on the 
other. It seems hardly strange at all, therefore, 
that man should have found himself literally 
swamped in the slough of his own misguided pas- 
sions, and that the first attempt of men to live in 
some sort of harmony, and with some community 
of interests, should have proved a signal failure. 

An eloquent author has said : " Let the word 
1 ought ' be stricken from our language, 
with all that it implies, and civilization The w 7 °, rd 

1 7 ought. 

would be dust in a day." And one chief 
advantage that society has now, over that of the 
olden time, is that man has learned to say, " I 
ought," and to acknowledge and regard his neigh- 
bor's rights equally with his own. 



178 THE CREATION. 

If to-day, all our laws of equity, the growth of 
centuries, could be stricken out ; all the memories 
of good examples and heroic sacrifices, the herit- 
age of generations, eradicated ; ana! all our educa- 
tional, moral, religious, and refining institutions 
razed to the ground, how soon would men forget 
their obligations and discard the wisest counsel, 
and ambition, lust, and rapine reign supreme. 

But the sense of justice and of mutual depend- 
ence and responsibility had to grow, and approve 
themselves in man's own experience. And till he 
had had experience, both of the evil and the good 
that are possible to society, he could not certainly 
distinguish between them, for there was neither 
history nor example to guide him as there is to 
guide men to-day. 

And now, since evil in its very nature is not 
only self-destructive but carries destruc- 

Nature of 

evil. tion in its train, and as evil had come 
to prevail in the society of that early 
time, in agreement with what seem the recorded 
facts of history, we have characterized the first at- 
tempt at human society as a failure. 

" And God saw that the wickedness of man 
was great in the earth, and that every imagination 
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continu- 
ally. . . And God said I will destroy man." 

We shall find the Hebrew idea of God and 



FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 1 79 

the method of his government woven into the 
narrative, as we find it in all the writ- 
ings of that ancient people. The theory The Hebrew 

fe r r J theology. 

is that disaster, calamity, and affliction ; 
that everything in nature or experience out of the 
normal course ; that earthquakes and epidemics, 
floods and fevers, are expressions of the divine dis- 
pleasure. We have learned to regard these things 
otherwise. But such was their understanding and 
interpretation. And in the wickedness of the peo- 
ple, therefore, which was very great, was found 
sufficient occasion for the flood, in which the earth 
was cleansed of its corruption and violence by the 
destruction of the life upon it. 

The story of the flood is briefly this : that the 
fountains of the deep were broken up 
and the clouds poured out their rain, till the deluge, 
the earth was covered and the waters 
prevailed above the mountain tops, destroying the 
life that was on the land, except Noah and his 
family, with the" animals gathered by them in the 
ark, built for their preservation. 

The ark, as appears, was not a boat in any 
proper sense, but a huge box, well proportioned for 
floating safely on the water, but unprovided, so far 
as we are informed, with oar, sail, or rudder; left 
to drift whithersoever it might. 

According to the record it was about five hun- 



180 THE CREATION. 

dred feet long ; less than one hundred feet wide, 
and about thirty feet high ; having a capacity it is 
computed, about equal to that of the steamship 
Great Eastern. A man in Holland some years ago 
constructed a vessel on the model of the ark, and 
found it well adapted to sustain a very great 
weight. 

Sundry questions inevitably spring up at men- 
tion of the ark, such as, how was it possible for 
Noah and his family to collect specimens of all 
the animals — one pair of the unclean and least 
useful, and seven of the clean and more serviceable 
ones ? And whether it was possible for the ark 
to contain so many animals with food sufficient 
for such a time. But let us not anticipate. The 
problem is not so difficult as may at first appear. 

Having learned the story, let us now, according 
to our custom, make some inquiries in other di- 
rections. 

Is there any evidence, aside from the written 
account, that there ever was a flood ? 

Evidence 

of Yes. Evidence that neither the bold- 

est scepticism can gainsay or the sharp- 
est criticism undermine. 

The testimony is of various kinds. 

i. There are traditions of a flood among many 
races and nations, some of which know nothing of 
our Bible or perhaps have never heard of it ; tradi- 



FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 151 

tions dating back to the early history of man. 
The Chaldees, the Phoenicians, the Persians, the 
Hindoos, even the American Indians, but espe- 
cially the races that trace their origin to the in- 
terior of Asia, have such traditions. And though 
their accounts vary somewhat, they agree in the 
important points, that the flood was destructive of 
human life in general, but that a few, accounted 
righteous persons, were saved in some sort of boat. 

And though tradition is but perpetuated rumor, 
and not to be depended on as decisive evidence 
in the absence of anything beside, it is hardly pos- 
sible that a tradition so general could exist, and 
especially with essential points so far corresponding, 
unless there was some good foundation for it. 

2. There is evidence in many a highland dis- 
trict, on many a mountain side, and even on 
mountain tops, that at no distant period they 
were under the sea ; in other words, that " the 
waters prevailed above them." 

If you will go to Montreal and climb the 
mountain back of that city, where workmen are 
digging in the park, you may find there the shells 
of such animals as live in the sea to-day, and 
that at an elevation of four hundred feet above 
the present level of the St. Lawrence river. There 
is but one way of accounting for the existence of 
modern marine remains at such a height, and that 



1 82 THE CREATION. 

is, that within comparatively modern times, all that 
region has been covered by the sea ; the waters 
prevailed above. 

And what appears so plainly in that locality 
can be traced with equal certainty in various re- 
gions of the earth. There is no possible doubt of 
the fact. 

If, then, we inquire into the cause of the flood, 
it may have been due to either of two 
floods. causes ; an unusual fall of rain, or the 
sinking of the land in the flooded district, 
and a filling in of waters from the sea. Either 
would be effectual in accomplishing the result. 
The question may be asked, is there anything an- 
alogous in modern times, to such a mode of cover- 
ing the land with the sea? 

Yes, though on a comparatively moderate scale. 
About sixty years ago a tract of land, half the 
size of Connecticut, at the mouth of the 
examples. r i ver Indus, suddenly sank to such ex- 
tent, the sea covered part of it, and the 
other, from high, dry land, was reduced to swamp. 
Still more recently a portion of the coast of 
Chili sank several feet, so that the waters pre- 
vailed where, in all recorded time before, had 
been dry land ; and at another time, a sudden up- 
heaval of a portion of that coast made dry land 
of a tract that had long been covered by the sea. 



FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 1 83 

And sudden changes in the level of the surface of 
the earth are almost always attended by long and 
copious rains. The clouds and the sea seem to 
combine to work destruction upon the earth. In 
the expressive language of the sacred word, " The 
windows of heaven are opened " on the one hand, 
" and the fountains of the great deep are broken 
up" upon the other. 

It is certain, then, that floods may occur, by the 
operation of causes that are well understood. They 
have occurred, and, on a small scale, still occur. 

Next comes the very important question ; was 
the Noachian deluge universal ? No. m 3 , 

The deluge 

1. There is not water enough in the not 
earth, the air, and clouds together to 

cover the whole surface of the earth, to such ex- 
tent it would prevail above the mountain tops. 

2. Such a flood, in such a length of time, would 
have destroyed every plant, if not every seed upon 
the earth ; and there is no record of any attempt to 
preserve the plants from the flood ; and all plant 
life must have begun anew, presumably by a new 
creation, when the deluge had subsided. Moreover, 
the flocks that were preserved during the preva- 
lence of the waters, after they came from the ark, 
must have perished for want of pastures, while 
waiting on the barren hills for the plants to grow 
again. 



1 84 THE CREATION. 

Further, all fishes and other animals that live 
in fresh water, and all corals and other animals 
that grow in shallow water, must inevitably have 
perished, for the water was both salt and deep. 
And no mention is made of marine animals as 
among those for whose preservation any provision 
was made. 

If we seem to be taking somewhat bold ground 

when we say the Noachian deluge was 

Criticisms, not universal, we have only to answer 

in reply, that we know of no scholarly 

critic, whatever his religious opinions or scientific 

training, who believes that the earth has been 

completely covered by a flood at any time since 

the creation of man ; or that the time has ever 

been, since .the mountains were reared and the 

beds of the sea were hollowed out, that the whole 

earth was under water. 

How, then, are we to interpret the emphatic 
lan^ua^e of the record, that " the waters 

Interpretation ° ° 

of prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, 

and all the high hills under the whole 
heaven were covered ? " We are to follow the 
same rule of interpretation precisely as in other 
passages, with like sweeping or general phrases. A 
few examples will place the matter in a clear and 
definite light. It is said at the time of famine 
that sent Jacob's sons to Egypt, that " the whole 



FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 1 85 

world came to Egypt to buy corn." Strictly speak- 
ing, but a small fraction of the world had any 
knowledge of such a land as Egypt. And yet the 
language is not misleading. It is said of David 
the king that he " was feared by every nation 
under heaven;" when probably half the nations, 
at the very least, were unconscious of the exist- 
ence of any such man as David. 

Luke says that " Caesar gave command that all 
the world should be taxed," meaning of course 
the Roman world or empire. Paul says to the 
Colossians that the gospel had been preached " to 
every creature under heaven ; " while as yet the 
disciples were few and the preachers but a meagre 
company. It seems hardly possible for the intelli- 
gent reader to mistake the meaning of these ex- 
pressions. They imply a very wide, but by no 
means universal extent. 

Similar expressions are in daily use in our com- 
mon speech. We say " the whole town" was at 
the meeting, meaning only that the meeting was 
large and enlisted general interest. We say " the 
whole city was excited," when much the larger 
portion of the people had no knowledge of the 
exciting cause, and no feeling or interest in it. 
And yet no one is misled or deceived by such 
language. It expresses a general fact, but is by 
no means specific as to numbers or extent. 



1 86 THE CREATION. 

A possible interpretation is that the whole 
world then known was but a fraction of what is 
known to-day, and the language had a specific 
application to the part that was known. But we 
are shut up to no such exceptional interpretation. 
The meaning is clear enough if we but consider 
the common use of terms. 

What, then, is the plain and reasonable interpre- 
tation of the story of the flood ? 

It is, that there was a flood of unusual ex- 
tent ; that it was destructive both to 
The piam men anc j J3 eas ts ; that a few persons with 

meaning. * 

certain kinds of animals in the flooded 
district were preserved ; and that, in accordance 
with the Hebrew idea of the divine character and 
government, the flood being a great disaster, was 
attributed to the divine displeasure at the wicked- 
ness of men ; and that the rescued ones became 
the types of purity, since on the same theory, the 
divine favor was manifestly upon them. 

There is nothing, therefore, that need tax our 
credulity, much less defy our reason, in the idea 
that there was a flood, that it wrought great de- 
struction, and that a few escaped its ravages. 

If the Noachian delude was not uni- 

Location ° 

of versal, in what part of the world did it 

occur? It is not difficult to find an an- 
swer to this question. Most of the races that have 



FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 1 87 

any record or tradition of a flood, trace their ori- 
gin to interior or Western Asia. It is regarded 
now as quite certain that it was in that section of 
the world that man originated, and that the race 
scattered thence to the different quarters of the 
globe. 

It is every way reasonable, therefore, to suppose 
that here is where the flood occurred. Indeed, 
there is ample evidence that that region has suf- 
fered seriously both by fire and flood, by earth- 
quake and deluge, since it was first occupied by 
man. 

Moreover, it would require but little subsi- 
dence of the land to repeat that disaster „ 

1 Possibility 

to-day, bringing in the waters of the of 

Caspian Sea upon the north, and the 
Indian Ocean upon the south in such way as to 
flood the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, the 
Indus and the Ganges, with all their feeding 
streams, involving a wide continental area in de- 
struction. Not only is this region exposed to the 
sea both on the north and on the south, but 
some portions of the interior, as the Dead Sea, 
lie far below the sea level now, and are only pro- 
tected from inundation by the highland rims about 
the borders. 

One thought incidental is suggested as we pass. 
Whether the district covered by the flood compre- 



1 05 THE CREATION. 

hended all the earth that was then inhabited, we do 
not know. It is by no means improba- 
of ble that the race had spread beyond its 

limits. And the fact that the Egyptians 
have no tradition of the deluge, suggests the pos- 
sibility that Egypt did not share the disaster that 
came upon Western Asia. And the same may cer- 
tainly be said of remoter portions of the world. 
This would make the rapid peopling of the world 
subsequently, more easily accounted for, and is, all 
things considered, the most reasonable solution of 
that problem. 

In the facts of human history, then, we find the 

origin of the story of the flood. In re- 

*;. st °7 cording an affair of such tremendous 

rational. ° 

moment, it could hardly be otherwise 
than that the account should come to be in- 
vested somewhat with the character of romance. 
For in this as in many other sacred stories, the 
facts recorded are of less importance than the les- 
son taught ; a deeper meaning is implied than the 
words immediately express. 

That men should have grown wicked when left 
without wisdom, example, or restraint is in no 
sense strange ; and that they should have brought 
destruction on themselves, in consequence of vice 
and crime, is something we are not troubled now 
to understand. Only justice and truth, equity and 



FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 1 89 

honor can guarantee the existence of society. 
Abolish these and society disintegrates ; no man 
trusts his neighbor, and the whole social fabric 
goes to rapid ruin. 

But the tragedy of the flood, in different forms, 
has been re-enacted many times, and is m 

' The tragedy- 

passing on the stage again to-day. A oft 

nation perishes ; but here and there a 

devoted teacher, a heroic leader, with some virtue 

to commend him to posterity, stands out above his 

nation and his age. While the nation dies he 

lives; and though the nation may be buried in the 

flood of subsequent events, he is accorded a place 

in the living heart of a grateful world. And here 

we find the moral of the lesson of the flood. 

If the time shall ever come when this nation 
perishes, when the very memory thereof shall have 
almost passed away, there are a few names, per- 
haps not half so many as in Noah's family, shall 
live ; for their virtues, their courage, their fortitude 
and faithfulness forbid that they be forgot. 

We stand upon the ruins of the Athenian 
Acropolis to-day. The history of the glo- 
rious times that were, seem now but the Reflections, 
dissolving fabric of a dream. But the 
ghosts of such as Socrates and Plato seem still to 
haunt those ancient streets, and are more real to 
us than anything beside in the whole history of 



190 THE CREATION. 

Greece. The nation was buried long ago, swept 
away as by a flood, but the best things in it were 
preserved. 

And finally, if we go to Palestine and climb the 
dreary hills about Jerusalem, traverse the desolate 
Judean plains, and think of the wonders of that 
ancient world — of the wilderness and Sinai, of the 
temple and the throne — there is one figure that 
towers over all the rest ; one life that rises above, 
and makes even poor and wretched Bethlehem and 
dilapidated Nazareth most holy ground ; for there 
went out thence a more potent force, to shape the 
lives and quicken the hearts of men, than the world 
has ever known beside. 



X. 



Diversity of Tongues. 



"And the whole earth was of one language and of one 
speech." 

"The formation of language supposes two conditions: i.'A 
consciousness in man of his power to produce articulate sounds. 
2. A perception of the possibility of those sounds becoming the 
signs of his ideas." — Locke's Essay. 

"Th' invention all admired, and each how he 
To be th' inventor missed ; so easy 't seemed 
Once found, which yet unfound, most would have thought 
Impossible." 

—Paradise Lost. 



X. 

DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 

Whatever may have been the origin of human 

language — whether the first created were _ . . 

& ° Origin 

endowed with the gift of speech, or, as of 

seems more probable, language is the gua 
slow growth of centuries — there must have been a 
time when the human family was of one language 
and one speech. We know no argument in favor 
of the first theory. It is a mere assumption based 
on the fact that man is gifted above other animals 
and that he has need of speech. The other theory, 
namely, that language is a growth, is capable in 
good degree of demonstration. 

Place a group of animals together, and they 
soon come to understand each other in a sort of 
rude yet decisive way. Much more, two human 
beings, though they be of different races and differ- 
ent tongues, will soon communicate their sentiments 
and ideas to each other by articulate sounds.* 

* Peschel states that young children of some South African tribes, 
left much to themselves during the long absence of parents in collect- 
ing their winter's food, develop a sort of language of their own. 



194 THE CREATION. 

The process is a very simple one. If we go 
back to the history of the infant race, 

Growth J 

of we may suppose the first attempt to 

angu ' have been nothing more than a vocal im- 
, pulse, having no intelligent design or intelligible 
meaning, but growing out of the desire for expres- 
sion. Nevertheless, when found to answer a pur- 
pose, or procure some satisfactory response, it 
would be repeated and so grow into a habit, which 
would widen and extend till it comprehended a 
variety of sounds, each of which would have some 
special meaning. The same process would go on 
in different individuals at the same time. Each 
would learn to accept or imitate the other's utter- 
ances, as expressing certain ideas ; and each con- 
tributing a share to the common stock, a single lan- 
guage would grow up and be mutually adopted.* 
Thus a community of people, living in the same 
_ place and in like conditions, would have 

One x 

language one language and one speech. And so 
long as they continued one community, 
with no great variety of interests and no great di- 
versity of aims, they would continue in the same 
habits of life, thought, and speech. We see this 

* The theory that language is a human invention need not dis- 
turb the equanimity of the most reverent believer in the Scriptures ; 
for it is distinctly stated (Genesis ii. 19, 20) that man gave names 
to the animals. They had no names till he invented and applied 
them 



DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 1 95 

well illustrated in the unenterprising lands of the 
Orient, where customs of life and habit, and fash- 
ions in dress even, remain almost the same as 
they were thousands of years ago, though the in- 
flux and mingling of foreign elements have some- 
what corrupted and changed their speech. So long 
as society undergoes no great changes, so long the 
language will undergo no important modifications. 
But when the first begins to change the other will 
soon follow, and from causes in no wise difficult to 
trace. 

So long as a community is small and devoted 
largely to a common pursuit, so long 
there is little occasion or opportunity of 

for change. But history and experience 
alike go to prove, that as a community enlarges, 
as its numbers increase and its business interests 
multiply, and especially as men of courage and 
ambition strike out from the old home, emigrate 
and lead out colonies to form new communities, 
as Abraham started out from Ur of the Chaldees, 
and Lot separated from his kinsman at the Jordan, 
different habits grow up and differences' of speech 
will soon appear. 

Although facilities of travel and com- T11 4 t . 

& Illustrations. 

munication make these things less appar- 
ent now, it is but a few years since this fact was 
well illustrated in our own country. We are an 



I96 THE CREATION. 

English-speaking nation. And yet, a generation 
since, a person bred in New England found it diffi- 
cult to understand a Southerner, on first acquaint- 
ance, and they of the West were quite perplexed 
over some peculiarities of speech of newly arrived 
New England neighbors. 

Not only does remoteness of locality and infre- 
quency of communication contribute to this result, 
but it is inevitable, as a community extends and 
trades and occupations increase in variety, that these 
differences should arise. Locality, kinds of business 
and habits of life must all be taken into the ac- 
count. And these differences will multiply in 
number and widen in extent, till after a few years, 
people who started in life together but have been 
separated, will sometimes be at a loss to under- 
stand each other. In the gold mines of California 
a dialect grew up quite incomprehensible to one 
who had no knowledge of their modes of life. It is 
related that when Chatham, on one occasion, visited 
the mines of Yorkshire, he was surprised to find 
he could not understand at all the coal digger's 
speech ; and, on the other hand, the statesman's 
polished rhetoric was but idle words in the ears of 
these men of brawny arm but narrow opportunities. 

A consideration of much importance in this 
connection is that language in remote ages was 
unwritten, and so took no more permanent form 



DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 1 9/ 

than that which was given it in passing from lip 
to lip. A missionary on revisiting a tribe Rapid 
of Indians after an absence of ten years, unwritten 
found their language so changed in that language, 
brief period, he had to learn it almost anew. And 
a traveller in Brazil relates that his guides, from 
different portions of the same tribe, had marked 
differences of accent and inflection. 

The pen and printing press now give to words 
some legible and lasting form, and therefore changes 
must be less rapid than in the early history of the 
race.* But in dealing with the origin of language, 
and its earliest development, we must take into 
account the conditions of human life in its earliest 
period. 

Now, on the theory that the human race had 
a common origin, or if not that we deal with the 
historic portion, it is plain that at first and for a 
considerable period, they must have been of one 
language and speech. So much is clearly deduci- 
ble from what we know of human society, and 
from the similarities that can be traced between 
all or most of the leading languages of the earth. 
For unity or affinity of language is conceded to 
imply unity of origin, near or remote. 

* Mr. Kenry Welsford, in his " Mithridates Minor : an Essay on 
Language" (London, 1848), assumes that unwritten languages change 
least ; but recent observations do not bear out the statement. 



I98 THE CREATION. 

But though there was only one language at the 
first, it was not possible, in the nature 

Different r ' 

tongues of things, that this should long continue. 
Changes in society and business introduce 
new words and new forms of expression, and these 
lead, soon or late, to new types of speech. That 
men came to speak different languages is a fact 
plainly stated in sacred history ; but a fact not 
dependent on that statement merely for proof. 
We have proof in all the history of the world and 
in our common observation of the world. The 
tongues have been confounded to such extent that 
it requires long study and training for persons 
come together from remote parts of the earth, to 
learn to express themselves clearly and fluently in 
each other's language. Even cognate languages, or 
those having a common root and origin, and each 
but a single remove from the original, will be 
found to possess essential differences in accent or 
inflection, and not unfrequently in words. Nor is 
anything extraordinary necessary to produce this 
result. It must inevitably come about, soon or 
late, in the very circumstances of the case. 

To make the matter with which we have to do 
as plain as may be, let us go back somewhat in 
the history of the infant race. 

Spreading out as they must have done from 
early Eden ; some to seek warmer climates per- 



DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 1 99 

haps toward the south, and others daring the more 
rigorous atmosphere toward the north ; 

5:5 r History ot 

some moving toward the mountains and the 
others toward the valleys — the hunters 
that they might find game and the herdsmen that 
they might find pasturage — and still others, given 
to tilling fruitful fields, that they might find pro- 
ductive soil, it is easy to conceive how soon so- 
ciety must have taken on something of the tribal 
character. There were hunter tribes and shepherd 
clans, and other classes or divisions, according to 
the occupations of the people. Each tribe soon 
formed a dialect of its own, growing in part out 
of the prevalent mode of life, and in this differed 
from all the neighboring tribes. 

The fact that facilities of travel were meagre, 
and families or tribes living but few miles apart 
may have met but rarely, would give these differ- 
ences the more opportunity to grow and become 
distinctly marked. Moreover, men in that day 
were in disposition, doubtless, very much as they 
are in this ; and as families, communities, and tribes 
grew jealous of one another's strength, they would 
be the more inclined to live apart, and each dwell 
by itself: all of which would tend to make their 
languages more distinct. 

1 But there were other causes tending to separate 
communities and build up new types of speech. 



200 THE CREATION. 

Society makes no great advances till men start 
_ . up here and there, full of enterprise or 

Other causes: x x 

ambitious full of ambition, and set themselves to at- 
tain place and power above their fellows. 
They conceive the plan of uniting several families 
in a tribe, or several communities in a state, over 
which they may rule ; or, gathering a great number 
of tribes into one vast empire, as did Rurik in 
Northern Europe a thousand years ago. 

First among the men of this type, of whom we 
have any record, was Nimrod, who " be- 

Nimrod. gan to be a mighty one in the earth." 
" A mighty hunter before the Lord" he 
is styled. A mighty conqueror he was, for that 
day it seems, as well. The account given of this 
man in the tenth of Genesis is very brief, but full 
of grave significance. He seems to have conceived 
the idea of uniting all the tribes in a single king- 
dom, of which, very naturally, he aspired to be 
king. He saw how men were scattered abroad to 
the east and to the west, to the north and to the 
south. He saw the broad and fruitful valley of 
the Euphrates, and it seems to have occurred to 
him that this was the place for the seat of a great 
empire. Accordingly he went to work, with such 
means as were at his command. Every tribe sub- 
dued or won to his standard increased his strength 
and added to his fame, and in process of time he 



DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 201 

succeeded in good measure in his scheme. Like 
all great rulers, he sought to centralize his power 
and so combine these communities in one, that 
they should forget they had ever been separate 
peoples. 

He built his capital with all the magnificence 
he could command. And when the val- 
ley of the Tigris was added to his realm B t ylon T* 

J ° Nineveh. 

he founded other great cities, and Baby- 
lon and Nineveh, both most wonderful cities of 
their time, are accounted among the fruits of his 
enterprise, skill, and power. 

One daring device, attributed to him or to his 
people, was to rear an immense tower in 
the midst of the valley of the Euphrates, Th t e ^ e e r at 
which should overtop any other structure 
ever reared by man ; a tower of so great height it 
should serve as a beacon to all the tribes, not only 
in the valley but far away upon the mountains, 
and would tend to convince men in all time to 
come, that here was the mightiest power in all the 
earth, rivalling even the power upon the throne of 
heaven itself. This structure was designed not 
only as a monument of greatness, but as a centre 
about which the national pride might gather, and 
the national memories cluster ; a sort of magnet, 
to draw the people together and kindle in them a 
popular sentiment of unity, so that there should 



202 THE CREATION. 

be no more desire to separate from this greatest of 
kingdoms ; no more an inclination to be scattered 
abroad on the face of the earth. It. was to be a 
sort of shrine, as Jerusalem was to the Hebrews of 
a later day, as Mecca is to the Mussulmen to-day. 
With this bold and far-reaching design they set 
to work. Whether the scheme commanded at 
once the approval and willing aid of all concerned 
in it, or was carried on as the work of a master 
mind to which all others were in subordination, we 
have no certain means of knowing, nor is it im- 
portant for our present purpose. But the work 
began. They made bricks and they used asphalt 
for mortar; the use of lime for such purpose then 
being probably unknown. The best skill of the 
times was doubtless brought into requisition, for 
the structure was designed to have something 
more than a transient interest and importance. 
The whole affair is briefly set forth in the 

story of the Tower of Babel. And fortu- 
Tower of nately, where the Bible record fails us, by 

reason of its brevity, other history comes 
in to give us some detail. Ancient writers vie 
with one another in describing the wonders and 
magnificence of the tower. As nearly as can now 
be determined it was about five hundred feet 
square at the base and eight stories high, each 
story being of great height and the whole over- 



DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 203 

topping any other building ever reared by human 
hands. The tower was solid throughout, except 
the upper story, which was fitted up in royal style, 
for the pagan god that was supposed sometimes 
to come down from heaven and perch upon the 
high places of the earth. This is a description in 
brief, of the tower as it was designed to be. 
Whether it was completed we do not definitely 
know, though we are well assured it was begun 
and raised to a considerable height, for what are 
presumed to be the remains are still to be seen 
to-day. 

As the traveller approaches the Euphrates from 
the west, a little south of Babylon, a 

. . . . . . Ruins of 

huge ruin rises in the plain, and serves the tower# 
as a landmark for those both far and 
near. The base is of irregular and indefinite ex- 
tent, as any structure would be that had fallen to 
decay, but the height is about two hundred feet. 
The people thereabout call it Nimrod's Mountain ; 
but it is made of brick laid in asphalt, and known 
thence to be not a natural but an artificial struc- 
ture. And everything about it — the name, the lo- 
cation, the method of construction, and its very 
ancient date — so ancient no man pretends to fix 
it — combine to identify it with the tower that the 
people builded so long ago, under Nimrod's rule, 
as a testimony to all the nations of the earth. 



204 THE CREATION. 

This tower, according to traditional account and 
such historic record as we have, was never com- 
pleted. 

For the failure to carry out so magnificent a 
_, _. design, various causes may be assigned in 

Possible *> ■' / & 

causes of the ordinary passage of events. 

I. Nimrod was a tyrant. There can 
be little doubt of that ; for none but a tyrant can 
hold crude peoples together and compel them to 
any toilsome enterprise. Tyrants may have their 
way for a time, but human nature too sorely tried 
will revolt, and any wide-spread revolution would 
stop the work. 

2. The attempt to mould together in a com- 
mon band, tribes of so many different tendencies 
and ways of life, without some underlying senti- 
ment of unity, would be hazardous in any case, 
and especially so where mutual jealousies of tribes 
tended to make them continually suspicious of one 
another. It is found practically impossible to bring 
our Indian tribes together in a single government. 

3. Kings do not always live — even if we suppose, 
as some do, that Nimrod represented a dynasty 
instead of an individual, the case is not changed 
in this respect. And when the place of a powerful 
potentate is left vacant and must be supplied., all 
the petty aspirants, with their several factions, come 
into conflict, and a degree of violence ensues that 



DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 205 

scatters the kingdom more widely than before the 
attempt at unity was made. The kingdom is broken 
up. And the cause of rupture continues to breed 
animosities between the different sections, which 
destroy what little harmony had grown up among 
them, and build partition walls between them. 

These are some of the causes that, in the or- 
dinary course of human events, would tend to 
destroy the kingdom and scatter the people abroad 
again. And thus each family, tribe, or clan would 
be left to itself, to find its own territory, devise 
its own mode of life, and, as we have seen, to form 
a dialect and eventually a language of its own. 

Let us observe before going farther the basis of 
fact and reasonable inference, on which 
our theory rests, in the particular case Condltlons 

* of the case. 

we have been tracing. 

1. There were the people scattered over an ex- 
tent of territory, in the immediate vicinity of the 
very cradle of the human race. It could hardly 
have been otherwise, at that early day, than that 
the tribes and families should have clustered in 
that section of the world. 

2. There was Nimrod, a mighty conqueror and 
first among the great kings and tyrants of the 
earth. If no name were given, we know from all 
human history, that such men do now and then 
arise and impress themselves upon their age. 



206 THE CREATION. 

3. There was the tower in the same locality, of 
whose size and structure there is no chance for 
doubt, since the ruin still remains to tell the story 
for itself. On these facts and plain inferences, our 
theory of the great dispersion is based. 

The account in Genesis gives a somewhat dif- 
ferent version of the immediate cause of 

The Hebrew . , . . _, _ 

record the dispersion at the lower 01 Babel. 
And yet the essential facts of that nar- 
rative are involved and accounted for, in the 
theory above developed, as we think, will readily 
appear as we proceed. The record is of un- 
doubted Hebrew origin, and reflects the Hebrew 
idea of the divine character and procedure. 

The facts on which the account was based 
were these : 

1. Here were these people living in close prox- 

imity, but unable to understand each 
st other's speech. It seemed a divine judg- 

ment upon them for some offence. 

2. There stood the tower. The people of the 
region explained that the attempt had been made 
to build it up to heaven. It was accounted an 
impious as well as daring scheme. And the ready 
interpretation was that the consequence appeared 
in the curse of confusion that had come upon 
these scattered tribes. The Hebrew idea of the 
ways of God with men, supplies the only element 



DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 2QJ 

necessary to make the two accounts, in all essen- 
tial points, the same. 

Now, we return to the proposition stated in the 
beginning, that while there was but one language 
at the first, as men increased in numbers and 
varied in locality and occupations, their forms of 
speech became more and more diverse, and the re- 
sult was different languages. 

The multiplication of tongues had probably 
besmn before the events of Babel. But _. 

Diversities 

the confusion became more decided and before 
the differences more pronounced, by rea- 
son of the rupture of the great kingdom, and the 
ambitions, hates, jealousies, and bitter tyrannies re- 
sulting, which served to drive the tribes more 
widely asunder than they had ever been before. 

But the Babel-builders were not the only rep- 
resentatives of their race. We touch a principle 
here that reaches far and wide, and the story has 
been repeated many times in human history. 

Nimrod is not the only conqueror who has 
conceived the daring scheme of uniting all the 
nations of the earth in one ; nor the only con- 
queror in whom ambition has quite o'erleaped itself. 

Alexander and Napoleon are names 
more familiar to us. Their schemes were ' e V"7 

repeated. 

no less audacious and scarcely less disas- 
trous in their results. A daring game has been 



208 THE CREATION. 

played on the stage of Europe in very recent years. 
The hungry northern bear has had his giant paws 
almost on the prize along the Hellespont he has 
coveted so long. The British lion, somewhat dis- 
comfited, showed signs of war, but was appeased for 
the time, by a liberal share of the incidental spoils. 
While the master spirit of the continent looked 
on, from the safe distance of the German court, 
marking out the map of Europe as he intended it 
should be. Never were planned more daring 
schemes, and never was ambition more ambitious. 
But all history proves that ambition has its 
limits and its checks. And that there is 
essono a Power above the world that is more 

the ages. 

than any power in the world, ought to 
be sufficiently apparent, in the fact that the abor- 
tive schemes of designing men are somehow turned 
to good account, in the progress of the human 
race. "All new languages," says Bunsen, quoted 
by Dr. Hedge, " have arisen from the breaking up 
of some great political bond which imposed one 
speech on its constituents." 

The breaking up of the Latin empire gave 
birth to no less than five of the languages, that 
are spoken in Southern Europe now. 

And this is only one of the many facts to be 
considered in the contemplation of this subject. 
The youth who would accomplish anything must 



DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 20O, 

not remain in leading-strings, but strike out for 
himself. The same is true of nations as 
of individuals. The nations that spread Conclusion, 
out into all the earth, after the great 
dispersion, accomplished more in the way of dis- 
covery and invention, of enterprise and progress, 
than would have been possible had they remained 
grouped together, in any single section of the 
world. When Caesar sat upon the throne, Rome 
was accounted mistress of the world. Discord and 
confusion entered in and her imperial dignity was 
sacrificed. But all Europe since, is peopled with 
nations that vie with one another, in industry and 
enterprise such as Rome never knew ; and so the 
defeated schemes, of here and there a single man, 
promote the happiness and progress of the human 



XL 



Antiquity of Man. 



XI. 

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

Man is a recent comer upon the earth; the 
last, indeed, of which we have any rec- __ . , 

J Man the last 

ord. But in saying his coming is recent of the 
we use the word only in a relative sense. 
A period of time may be absolutely long, yet rel- 
atively short — short as compared with the whole 
lapse of time from the beginning until now. 

The past half century has witnessed very im- 
portant changes in our chronological tables. 

Archbishop Usher, of the English Church, some 
two and a half centuries since, taking the 
Bible narrative as his guide, made the chronol r Q 
period of man's occupancy of the earth, 
somewhere from four thousand and four to four 
thousand one hundred and seventy-four (4004 to 
4174) years before Christ, or say, in round num- 
bers, six thousand years to the present date. It 
is evident, however, to any careful reader in this 
day, that there are wide intervals of time in that 
narrative, for which no allowance is made in the 



214 THE CREATION. 

good bishop's calculation. A descendant of David 
of the tenth generation, was a " son of David " as 
much as one of the first ; and persons of small im- 
portance were doubtless omitted from the record 
entirely. 

The vagueness and uncertainty of such calcula- 
tions may be illustrated in this wise. If in some 
far future age, all knowledge of this country shall 
have faded into dim tradition, and the attempt 
shall be made to re-write its history, it is con- 
ceivable that the names of Washington and Lin- 
coln may alone survive, in the list of our chief 
rulers. And if on that account, the reader shall 
conclude that the administration of the latter 
matched on to that of the former, and that at its 
close the government came to an end, it is evi- 
dent he will get but a meagre idea of the times 
so full of interest to us. So the Old Testament 
record must be regarded not as a consecutive his- 
tory, but a series of fragments, with wide lapses 
often between events there narrated in close and 
continuous order. 

Still, men feeling a sort of security in definite 
dates, and little given perhaps to speculation, ac- 
cepted Usher's chronology, with little question, 
for many years. But facts, long unconsidered or 
held to be of small importance, have forced a re- 
vision of opinion on the subject. Some of these 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 215 

facts it is our purpose to consider in this dis- 
course. 

Written history does not carry us back more 
than four thousand years. The Egyptian 
monuments — accounted the oldest struc- limits of 
tures of their class in existence — may 
carry us three thousand years farther. The earliest 
records, therefore, of such character do not go back 
more than seven thousand years. The best au- 
thorities, as Lepsius and Bunsen, make the period 
something less, while Champollion and Mariette 
somewhat extend it. 

But whatever date may be assigned to the early 
Egyptian temples, obelisks, and inscriptions, beyond 
these we have no written history and no monu- 
mental records, excepting such as pertain to habita- 
tions, implements, and modes of life of a people of 
whose existence we have not even a tradition pre- 
served among recent inhabitants of the world. 

No existing race traces its lineage to the Cave- 
dwellers of Belgium, the " Kitchen-midden _ ,. . 

' Indications 

men. of Denmark, to the Mound-builders beyond tradi- 
of America, or even to the Lake-dwellers 
of Switzerland. There is doubtless a connection 
between those ancient races and the men that live 
to-day, but the line is lost in a period of blank 
obscurity between. 

And suppose we go back to Egypt seven thou- 



2l6 THE CREATION. 

sand years ago, we do not find the human race 
there in its infancy. They had a language, not 
merely of signs but of vocal utterances — a written 
language, not of mystic hieroglyphs only, but of 
characters that may still be read ; they had exten- 
sive knowledge of many useful arts, and they had 
a well-established form of government. Men do 
not leap at a bound to such condition. It took 
the Hebrews a thousand years, from the departure 
of Abraham from his early home to develop a sys- 
tematic and stable government. And if it be said 
their captivity in Egypt hindered their progress, it 
is quite as reasonable to suppose that their contact 
with Egyptian institutions and theif knowledge of 
Egyptian government, also helped their progress. 
If the process was impeded in one direction it was 
facilitated in another. Besides, these people had 
already reached the tribal condition, with a patri- 
archial head, before their migration began, which 
implies a considerable history or experience still 
back of that point. 

If, then, we suppose the Egyptians to have 
lived under an established monarchy, and 

Remote J 

infancy of to have built and inscribed monuments 
seven thousand years ago, it is evident 
the infancy of the race, and even of that particu- 
lar people, must have dated far back of that. 
There had been time to invent, construct, and sys- 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 2\J 

tematize language ; to invent, discover, apply, and 
improve some of the arts ; to try various rude ex- 
periments of government in family, clan, and tribe, 
and to pass from dependence on the chase to the 
care of flocks, and from the nomad's tent to the 
fixed habitation. 

In any attempt to trace this remote condition 
of mankind the ordinary means of inves- 
tigation fail us utterly. There is neither of common 
document nor monumental record, and 
even the dim light of tradition is wanting. 

Our dependence must be upon the manifest 
changes in the condition of the human race, know- 
ing those changes to be wrought by slow degrees, 
or upon changes in the earth, as to climate, sur- 
face deposits, and forms of life, since man's earliest 
appearance. If, for instance we find the remains 
of man — either skeleton or handicraft — in cave- 
deposit, shell-heap or peat-growth, associated with 
the bones of animals long since extinct, we are 
justified in assigning a remote antiquity to such 
remains. If clear indications of man are found in 
rock or undisturbed gravel, at a given depth be- 
low the surface, and we find means to determine 
the rate of deposit of such formation, and the 
length of time since the deposit ceased, we may 
calculate with moderate certainty the length of 
time since such men lived. 



2l8 THE CREATION. 

We must use caution, however, not to attach a 

definite value or measurement to pro- 
Necessity *■ 

of cesses or agencies which by their very- 

nature are variable, and therefore indefi- 
nite. The rate of river erosions, for instance, on 
which much reliance is sometimes placed, varies 
according to the quantity of water and rapidity of 
the current ; and these may change from year to 
year, still more from one century to another. 
Likewise, the growth of peat and accumulation of 
stalagmitic crusts, vary between wide limits in dif- 
ferent localities, and from time to time in the same 
place. Again, great changes of climate, and entire 
change of the types of vegetable and animal life, 
may be regarded as indicating extended periods of 
time, but we do not sufficiently understand the 
causes of these changes to make them the basis 
of definite calculations. Indeed, it is quite evident 
that such changes are far from uniform in their 
rates of progress. 

There are certain indications, however, that may 
be studied with more confidence. These 
dependence. are found chiefly in peat-bogs, cave- 
deposits, shell-heaps, and in remains of 
ancient habitations in Switzerland known as lake- 
dwellings. 

But to facilitate our study let us lay out our 
work more definitely; considering first the geologi- 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 2IO, 

cal divisions of the Quaternary Age, and then the 
periods into which the era of man's existence is 
usually divided. 

The geologist commonly divides the Quaternary 
A^e of the earth's history into three ■ . , , 

53 J . Periods of 

periods, the Glacial, Champlain, and Ter- the Quater- 

-,-, . .. nary Age. 

race, ror convenience in our discussion 
we have added a fourth, the Present period cor- 
responding to what Prof. B. F. Mudge, of Kansas, 
has styled the Delta period, in allusion to the de- 
posits now forming at the mouths of great rivers, 
as the Mississippi, the Nile, and the Ganges.* 

In the first, or glacial period, all or the greater 
part of this continent, as far south as 
the Ohio River and the southern line of per i d. 
Pennsylvania, was covered with a great 
depth of ice, as shown by glacial scratches, and by 
erratic boulders scattered here and there over the 
country, at a wide distance from the beds in which 
they originated. And in Europe the ice prevailed 
as far south as Northern Italy. This was, of 
course, a period of extreme cold. There could 
have been little, if any life, either animal or vege- 
table, in the higher latitudes, and man could have 
lived only along the skirts of the glacier, or after 
it had retreated. 

* The reader is here referred to the upper section of the Chart af- 
fixed to the Sixth Lecture. Page 123. 



220 THE CREATION. 

The animal kingdom was represented by the 
Mammoth and Rhinoceros, which had survived 
from an earlier period, the Cave-bear and Hyena, 
and somewhat later by the Reindeer; all of which 
have been long extinct, save the Reindeer, which 
has migrated to a northern clime, following close, 
as would seem, upon the receding ice. 

Succeeding the Glacial, or " Great Ice " period, 
came the Champlain, marked by a lower 
perk>d. m g enera l level of land, a consequent wider 
extent of sea and warmer climate. 

In this period the glaciers melted in the re- 
gions now covered by the temperate zones, re- 
treated northward or toward mountain tops, leav- 
ing their vast accumulations of rocks, gravel, clay, 
sand, and the like, to which the geologist applies 
the general name of Diluvium or Drift. The ani- 
mals of this period differed in a marked degree 
from those of the preceding, as the changed cli- 
mate would lead us to expect, and included the 
huge sloth-like Megatherium, with a considerable 
number that still survive, as the lion, tiger, wild 
boar, ox, horse, and deer. There were monkies 
also in Asia and marsupials in Australia. 

Following the Champlain came the 

period. Terrace period, during which the land 

gradually rose again, the sea withdrew 

to its present limits, and the successive levels called 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 221 

Terraces were formed along the rivers by the grad- 
ual withdrawal of the streams to narrow and deeper 
channels. Some fine examples of the terraces of 
this period may be observed at Walpole and Han- 
over, N. H., and elsewhere along the valley of the 
Connecticut. The climate again had undergone a 
change ; was colder than that of the Champlain, 
but milder than that of the Glacial epoch. The 
animals were similar to those that live to-day, and 
need not therefore be described or named. 

Now, as to the bearing of these facts upon the 
subject we have in hand. There is no doubt of 
the existence of man from the earlier Champlain 
through the whole of the Terrace period, to the 
present. There is little question but that man 
lived in southerly latitudes in the latter part of 
the Glacial period. Beyond that we must proceed 
with extreme caution. But let us not anticipate. 

Having noted particularly the different geologi- 
cal periods into which the Quaternary Age of the 
earth is divided, let us mark next the periods 
into which it is customary to divide the era of 
man's existence ; observing that the two series are 
entirely independent of each other. 

Archseologists distinguish four differ- The Era of 

Man. 

ent periods in the existence of the hu- 
man race, according to the degree of advancement 
in art, namely : 



222 THE CREATION. 

1. The Paleolithic, or Rough Stone Age. 

2. The Neolithic, or Polished Stone Age. 

3. The Bronze Age, and 

4. The Iron Age. 

Some authorities recognize still other distinc- 
tions and mark other divisions. But the above is 
very simple and sufficiently exact for our purpose. 
The Rough Stone Age marks the rudest stage 
_ of man's existence ; when arrows, knives 

Ine 

Paleolithic and other implements of the chase and 
for domestic use, were roughly shapen 
from hard stone, chiefly flint and argillite. 

The Polished Stone Age marks a period of 
m some advancement upon the condition of 

The 

Neolithic the former, when men had learned to 
smooth and polish their implements ; and 
they employed a greater variety of hard stones, in- 
cluding porphyry, greenstone, and occasionally ob 
sidian and jasper. 

The Bronze Age marks the early use of metals 

in the arts — not the earliest, certainly, for 

Bronze men must have used copper before they 

learned to mix it with tin, producing the 

alloy known as bronze. But where metal was used 

in the same way as stone, that is, without fusing 

and moulding, the people must be regarded as still 

in the Stone Age. 

The Iron Age marks the higher civilization, 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 22$ 

when men, having learned mining and smelting, 

began to produce that most useful of 

all the metals. Wherever the history of Age° n 

man has been definitely traced, he seems 

to have passed through these several stages, or to 

be passing through them now. Where iron is in 

use at present, metals more easily obtained were 

once employed, and before that, stone served the 

purpose, either rudely fashioned or smoothly and 

neatly shapen, according to the knowledge and skill 

of the workmen. 

It must be borne in mind that the " Stone 

Acre" does not indicate any particular 

5 * r ■ ■ u Stone Age » 

period of the earth's history, but a cer- not a geoiogi- 

, ....... , - cal distinction. 

tain grade of civilization or degree of 
advancement among men. The Stone Age in 
France and that in Denmark may have been con- 
temporaneous, or they may have been wide apart. 
And while we speak of the Stone Age in Europe 
as very remote, the American Indians were in the 
Stone Age less than three centuries ago, and some 
of the South Sea Islanders are passing through 
that period now. 

In some sections of the world the advance has 
been much more rapid than in others ; and there 
have been cases, no doubt, of relapse from the 
higher conditions of society to the rude and bar- 
barous state. But this does not effect the fact that 



224 THE CREATION. 

the general tendency and direction has been from 
the lower toward the higher levels, in skill and 
knowledge and in the use of the arts. 

And now, what aid will these considerations ren- 
der us in tracing man's antiquity ? Let us see. 
If, in a country long inhabited by a highly 
civilized people we find relics of the 
a gradual 5t one Age, we are compelled to assign 

advancement. ° L ° 

to them a remote antiquity; for the rea- 
son that men do not pass rapidly, or in any brief 
period from one age and condition to another, 
much less through the several grades from the 
lowest to the highest. 

The people of the Paleolithic Age must have 
learned by slow degrees to smooth and perfect 
their spears and hatchets, and it was only when 
the rude implements had given way to the better 
workmanship, that the people were fairly in the 
Neolithic or age of polished stone. The periods 
thus overlap each other. And a like gradual ad- 
vance no doubt marked the changes to the ages of 
Bronze and Iron. 

Again, when with buried implements we find 
the remains of animals known to have 

Remains 

of extinct ani- been long extinct, we have further evi- 
dence of the remoteness of the period in 
which such implements were made ; for neither the 
plants nor the animals of the world change sud- 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 225 

denly, except in case of some abrupt and violent 
change in the climate or other physical condition 
of the earth ; and geology does not discover any 
such convulsive change within the period of man's 
existence. 

The fact that plants and animals adapted to a 
tropical clime once occupied the middle latitudes, 
and again that the reindeer, now found in Arctic 
regions, once wandered to the south of France, in- 
dicate remarkable changes of climate, and we may 
suppose, equally great changes of animal and vege- 
table life. But we have no reason to suppose these 
changes to have been cataclysmal ; rather, that they 
were gradually wrought, and therefore covered a 
vast period of time. 

But let us note a few facts bearing directly 
upon the subject. 

The first marked and conclusive evidence of 
the great antiquity of man — we mean 
greater than that of Usher's chronologi- ^JeiTeds. 
cal reckoning — was found in the ancient 
gravel beds along the valley of the river Somme, 
in northern France. Here Boucher de Perthes 
began his researches, and here Lyell and other 
English scientists followed. In the gravel, which 
still lay undisturbed, were found flint implements, 
evidently the work of human hands ; and as the 
river had slowly carved out its channel to the 



226 THE CREATION. 

depth of sixty feet since those deposits were made, 
it was evident the implements represented a re- 
mote period of time. They were the work of the 
" Stone Folk" — in other words, belonged to the 
Stone Age. 

In caves of France, Belgium, and England have 
m _ been found human remains, either bones 

The Cave- 
dwellers or implements, under accumulations of 

(Troglodytes). , - J . . . . . 

cave-earth and stalagmite, that indicate a 
great lapse of time. They are usually associated 
with remains of the cave-bear, hyena, mammoth, 
and other animals, most of which are now, and 
have been for a long period extinct. These caves 
were places of refuge and probably habitations of 
primitive man. Thither they carried game for 
food, and animals sought the refuse they left be- 
hind. And now the remains of man and beast lie 
confusedly together. 

Sometimes the caves were used as burial-places, 
and charred wood, the remains of fire used in pre- 
paring the funeral feasts, or possibly for purposes 
of cremation, are found near the entrance. Skele- 
tons are rarely obtained in sufficient state of pres- 
ervation to admit of exact investigation. Two or 
three skulls, however, have attracted so much at- 
tention as to demand some special mention. 

The " Neanderthal Skull," discovered in 1857, 
beneath a depth of four or five feet of earth or 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 22J 

loam, in a cave near Diisseldorf, was regarded as 
of a low type bearing some resemblance to that 
of an ape. Some ardent and incautious evolution- 
ists sought to identify it with the " Missing Link." 
But Mr. Darwin, after a careful examination, pro- 
nounces it " very well developed and capacious," 
indeed, not far below the average European skull. 
Virchow considers it of very moderate dimensions, 
but unquestionably a human skull. And Huxley 
bears his testimony to the same effect. It belonged, 
doubtless, to a rude savage — probably a representa- 
tive of the Rough Stone Age. 

At Cro-Magnon, in the south of France, in 
1858, in a " rock-shelter " formed by a broad, over- 
hanging ledge of limestone in a ravine, were dis- 
covered the skeletons of three men, a woman, and 
a child, all in a moderate state of preservation. 
One of these men, now familiarly designated as 
" the old man of Cro-Magnon," was about six feet 
in height, superior to the Neanderthal man in 
cranial development, but bearing such close re- 
semblance to him as to warrant the conclusion 
that they belonged to the same race. 

With these remains were found spears and 
arrow-heads of flint, that betray some advance- 
ment in art, being well shapen and comparatively 
smooth, and also less massive than those belong- 
ing to the crudest age. There were also a few 



228 THE CREATION. 

ornaments or trinkets of shells and ivory. These 
people must be regarded as belonging to the latter 
part of the Paleolithic, or possibly the opening of 
the Neolithic Age. 

Other noted caves or rock-shelters are found at 
Aurignac and Mentone, France; at Enghis, Belgium, 
and at Torquay and Brixham, England. But their 
revelations are much the same. They represent 
man as living in a rude condition, and fighting his 
way in the world, against wild beasts, including the 
mammoth and hyena, with weapons fashioned usu- 
ally with little skill, from flint and other refractory 
stones. 

Other evidences of the antiquity of man are 
found in shell-heaps, the refuse of feasts. 
"Kitchen- These have been more carefully studied 
in Denmark than elsewhere, and are 
there known as " Kitchen-Middens." Primitive man 
seems to have gathered in great numbers on the 
sea-shore, to feast on the oyster, mussel, and peri- 
winkle, together with a few aquatic birds and such 
fishes as might be taken in shallow water, and to 
have left behind these indications of his presence. 

Some of these heaps are of prodigious size, 
considering their origin, and must have been cen- 
turies in accumulating. Steenstrup describes them 
as a thousand feet long and ten feet high. 

The fact that the Kitchen-Middens are not 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 229 

found on the western coast of Denmark, where the 
ocean is slowly eating away the land, and that 
they are found sometimes seven or eight miles 
back from the shore, on the eastern side, where 
the water is comparatively quiet, and the land is 
slowly building out, affords some indication of the 
length of time since they were made. 

And the additional fact that the oyster has 
almost disappeared from the Baltic Sea, and that 
the cockle and periwinkle, which remain, are much 
smaller than those whose shells are heaped upon 
the shore, implies a great change in the water of 
that part of the sea. It is less salt than formerly ; 
That is to say, the adjoining land is higher and 
the influx of fresh water greater. And still there 
has been no sudden change in the land level of 
that portion of the earth in recent ages. The 
change was slow, and hence must have covered 
an extended period. 

Again, in the Kitchen-Middens are found flint 
knives, arrow-heads, and the like, both rough and 
polished, but nothing of metallic nature. They are 
of the Stone Age. 

In the same country are the famous Skovmoses, 
or Peat-beds, which afford perhaps the 
most indisputable of all evidence of the D . XT e 

r Peat-Mosses. 

great antiquity of man. These beds of 

moss and other plants which have changed to 



230 THE CREATION. 

peat, occupy depressions in the general level some- 
times known as boulder-pits, and have a depth in 
some instances of thirty feet. The age of the peat- 
beds has been estimated at four to five thousand 
years, but competent authorities add that it may 
be four times as great. The growth of peat is usu- 
ally very slow, but it sometimes accumulates with 
considerable rapidity. We cannot safely judge, 
therefore, of the age of a bed by its depth or ex- 
tent. 

We have, however, in the Danish peat-beds, one 
indication not usually met with in such formations. 

In the peat, at various depths below the sur- 
Fossii trees ^ ace > are P ros trate trunks of trees, that 

in have evidently grown upon the borders 

the peat. 

of the bog and fallen in. In the lower 
beds, two to five feet from the bottom, is the 
Scotch fir, a tree not now found indigenous in Den- 
mark, and that does not flourish when transplanted 
there." "Some of the trunks are two to three feet 
in diameter, and their number indicates that they 
were at one time the prevailing forest tree. 

Above these, and still at a considerable depth 
below the surface, are trunks of oak, of still greater 
size, that in like manner must have grown upon 
the banks and fallen into the bog. This tree is 
scarcely known in Denmark now. 

At a still higher level is found the beech which 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 23 1 

is the common forest tree of the country to-day. 
Changes of vegetation imply changes of climate. 

Here, now, are three classes or species of pre- 
vailing forest trees, implying so many changes of 
climate or other physical conditions. Moreover, it 
is scarcely conceivable that such a change could 
have been effected in a single generation. There 
were probably several generations of each kind of 
trees. Some idea, then, may be formed of the lapse 
of time since the peat-beds began to accumulate. 
There was a growth of Scotch fir, supplanted at 
length by the oak, and that in turn by the beech. 
And the beech not only occupied the ground at 
the time of the Roman invasion, almost two thou- 
sand years ago, but is the tree of Danish tradition. 
In other words, we have no trace either in history 
or tradition of the period of the earlier growths. 

But what bearing have these facts on human 
history? Just this. In the lower beds „ ., . 

' J Fossil lmple- 

of peat are found implements of man's ments 
workmanship — flint arrows — under the m e pea ' 
trunks of fir, in such position as they could not 
have reached by simply working their way down- 
ward through the moss, as pointed implements 
may sometimes do. These arrows were lost in the 
bog while the Scotch fir was growing on the bank. 
Man must, therefore, have inhabited the country at 
the time. In higher layers of the peat are found 



232 THE CREATION. 

other implements, both bronze and iron, which 
mark the different periods into which the age of 
man is divided. 

Quatrefages states that the Scotch fir r in the 
peat-beds may be regarded as corresponding to the 
Stone Age, the oak to the Bronze, and the beech 
to the Iron. But this statement must be taken 
with some allowance. 

Once more in the same line of evidence. The 

fishermen of Neuchatel and other parts of 
The r 

Swiss Lake- Switzerland had long been annoyed by a 
we ings ' mysterious entangling and breaking of 
their nets by obstructions, at the bottom of the 
lakes, that could not be discerned. 

The draining of a portion of one of the lakes, 
in the winter of 1854, brought to light a number 
of piles or posts driven into the mud, which had 
evidently been shapen for the purpose and placed 
there by human hands. About these timbers, at 
various depths below the surface, were found stone 
implements, both rough and polished, together with 
pieces of rude pottery shaped by hand, but without 
the aid of the wheel, and known thence to antedate 
the Roman period. 

Further examination revealed the fact that these 
piles had sometime served the purpose of founda- 
tions for human habitations, built out over the 
lake, and connected with the shore in some cases, 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN 233 

by a sort of causeway. This discovery stimulated 
exploration, and it now appears that such dwell- 
ings were once common in Switzerland. And the 
farther discovery of the bones of animals, both ex- 
tinct and recent, wild and domesticated, also of 
canoes and fishing tackle, and in western Switzer- 
land of bronze as well as stone implements, indi- 
cates that the existence of the lake-dwellers cov- 
ered an extended period of time, and that from first 
to last, considerable advances were made in the 
arts of civilization. They built their houses in 
these novel positions for safety against the incur- 
sions of savage neighbors. Oftener than otherwise 
there seems to have been no direct communica- 
tion with the shore, except by boat, or possibly 
by drawbridge, of which no traces now remain. 

Herodotus describes such dwellings in Thrace 
twenty-five hundred years ago. Remains of such 
have been found in some of the boggy lakes of 
Ireland ; and similar buildings are found to-day in 
some of the islands of the South Pacific. The 
earlier lake dwellings of Switzerland must be as- 
signed to the Stone Age, and the later to the Age 
of Bronze. 

These evidences, the lake -dwellings, Value of the 

evidence. 

the kitchen-middens, peat-bogs, and cave- 
deposits tell one story — that man existed on the 
earth far back of the historic period. But, it will 



234 THE CREATION. 

be observed, we have not in any of them the data 
for definite calculations in years. 

Suppose we admit that they fully justify the 
usual division of the human period into the sev- 
eral ages designated as Stone, Bronze, and Iron, 
we have no clue, in this fact, to the length of time 
required for man to pass through any one of them. 
Suppose we find, in the middle layers of peat, 
trunks of oak trees three hundred or five hundred 
years old ; we do not know whether the period of 
the oak covered one generation or many. 

What, then, is gained by the examination of 
such evidence ? 

Just this. It serves to establish the fact of 
man's remote origin ; not to measure the period of 
man's occupancy of the earth in years, or even in 
centuries, but only to show it to be far beyond 
that formerly assigned. 

We have means, however, for an approximate 
estimate. 

Let us now compare the periods of the human 
era, or the Age of Man, with the periods 

Quaternary ° A 

and human of the Quaternary formation in geological 
history ; bearing it in mind, as before 
stated, that there is no necessary correspondence 
between them. The two relate to different sub- 
jects ; nevertheless they are intimately related to 
each other. 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 235 

If the remains of man and those of particular 
animals are found together in any considerable 
quantities, and especially in several different locali- 
ties, it is reasonable to presume that such men 
and animals inhabited the earth at the same time. 
There may be an exceptional case, now and then, 
where remains from widely different periods have 
become accidentally mingled ; but such cases must 
be rare. 

We have found, with the earliest relics of man's 
workmanship, the remains of the mam- 

x Man and 

moth, and one or two other animals long the 
since extinct. We have also found the 
mammoth and its brute companions to have lived 
in the Glacial period. But because man and the 
mammoth were at one time together upon the 
earth, it does not of necessity follow that their 
advent was contemporaneous. The appearance of 
the mammoth may have long preceded that of 
man, as man has certainly long survived the 
mammoth. 

Fossils of this huge animal clearly indicate that 
some species lived before and during the Glacial 
period ; but it was only after it had passed its 
meridian that man appears to have disputed its 
sovereignty of the earth. 

A careful examination of the whole subject 
leads us to the conclusion, that man appeared in 



236 THE CREATION. 

Europe during the latter part of the Glacial pe- 
riod ; or certainly not earlier than that 

Man 

post-glacial, period of partial recession of the ice, 
sometimes designated as the Interglacial 
epoch. 

It is possible that explorations in the tropics 
may yet set the mark farther back, but there is 
no evidence in Europe or America that warrants a 
remoter date. 

Such are the conclusions — so far, at least, as 
Europe is concerned — of the Anthropological Soci- 
ety of London, according to the Report for 1878. 
And Prof. Huxley, in his address before the Brit- 
ish Association, at Dublin, in the same year, 
reaches substantially the same conclusion. 

We are well aware that some archaeologists 
claim a higher antiquity for the race, but 
of higher an- on grounds that seem to us inconclusive ; 
such as the occurrence of bones consid- 
ered human in Tertiary deposits ; marks of sharp 
instruments upon the bones of animals used for 
food, with the presence of sharp flints and charred 
wood in the same deposits. 

With reference to these it must be said : 

1. Bones found in the Ohio valley, in the early 
part of the present century, and confidently pro- 
nounced human, were, on examination by compe- 
tent authority, found to belong to the frame of one 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 2$? 

of the large quadrupeds. And several such mis- 
takes have been made, even by men of science, in 
the past two hundred years. 

2. Markings on bones, resembling those made 
by sharp instruments, may have been produced by 
the teeth of animals that fed upon the remains. 

3. Many sharp fragments of flint, hastily pro- 
nounced the result of human workmanship, have 
been found to be natural fragments, and may be 
matched along the chalk beaches of England and 
elsewhere where flint abounds. 

4. Human bones and flint implements have, in 
some cases, been accidentally and confusedly min- 
gled with deposits of an earlier date. 

5. The presence of charred wood is not always 
a positive evidence of the presence of man. No 
other animal uses fire, but lightning played its 
hazardous freaks long before man existed on the 
earth, and spontaneous combustion was a possi- 
bility of former as it is of recent times. 

A skull is reported to have been found in 
volcanic breccia of the Tertiary Age 
(Pliocene period), in Calaveras County, California 
California, associated with gold-bearing 
gravel. But it is now deemed quite probable that 
the auriferous gravels, or gold-drift, of California, 
belong wholly to the Quaternary Age. And Prof. 
LeConte regards the later lava deposits also as 



238 THE CREATION. 

Quaternary, perhaps as late as the Champlain 
period. 

Moreover, that Calaveras discovery has a secret 
history not inaptly travestied in Bret Harte's " So- 
ciety upon the Stanislaus." The skull was not 
seen in situ by any scientist, and any theory 
based upon that as a "pliocene skull" must be 
taken at great hazard. 

Then, as to the testimony of cave-deposits, peat- 
Summing- beds, and the like, of which we have 
up the already spoken in some detail. 

evidence. 

The gravel beds of the river Somma 
have been marked as of very ancient date. But 
the fact that the Somme has. cut its way through 
the glacial drift into the chalk or Cretaceous rocks, 
and that these ancient gravels lie on the slopes of 
the chalk, proves conclusively that the cutting has 
been done since the drift was deposited, and, there- 
fore, since the close of the Glacial period. The 
shell-heaps certainly cannot be assigned an earlier 
date, for had they existed before, they would have 
been inevitably crushed and swept away by the 
movement of the ice. 

And whatever age may be assigned to the 
Danish peat-beds, they occupy cavities or depres- 
sions in the surface, believed to have been scooped 
out by the action of the glaciers, and must hence 
have accumulated since the glaciers passed away. 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 239 

The Swiss lake-dwellings are variously esti- 
mated at from thirty-three hundred to six thou- 
sand years old ; and few authorities would venture 
to assign to the glaciers a date so recent. 

In certain caves human remains have been 
found beneath stalagmitic crusts three to five feet 
in aggregate depth ; and in one case that has been 
carefully observed, the rate of accumulation is said 
not to exceed one sixteenth of an inch in a cen- 
tury. At this rate a deposit of five feet would re- 
quire the enormous period of ninety-six thousand 
years. But there is no evidence that the rate of 
accumulation has been uniform. And the fact that 
in a cave at Gibraltar, eighteen inches of stalag- 
mite has been shown to have accumulated in less 
than six hundred years, and that according to Prof. 
Winchell, stalactites sometimes grow in the lead 
caves of the West, at the rate of one foot in a sin- 
gle year, shows the utterly unreliable character of 
all estimates based on the rate of progress of such 
formations. And yet on some such precarious 
evidences are all the arguments for the pre-glacial 
existence of man based. We submit, that they are 
not reliable, satisfactory, or conclusive. 

The question, then, as to the date of man's 
advent turns upon the date of the disappearance 
of the glaciers from the middle and lower lati- 
tudes. 



240 THE CREATION. 

As the glaciers that once overspread Europe as 
„ .. , . far south as the Pyrenees and Italian 

Man s relation J 

to Alps, withdrew toward the north, by 

the glaciers. r , r . . - . 

reason of the softening climate, man fol- 
lowed ; perhaps not close upon their brink, but not 
far behind. His companions were the cave-bear 
and the mammoth, and later the reindeer and the 
dog. The mammoth and his brute companions 
have long since disappeared ; not a single specimen 
having lived, so far as we have any evidence, with- 
in the historic period. We know of them only by 
their fossil remains. The reindeer is not extinct, 
but has migrated from the middle latitudes, fol- 
lowing close upon the retreating glacier, and is 
found now only in Arctic regions. 

Arrived at this conclusion the question changes 
form. 

How long since the Glacial period? 

Some attempt has been made to esti- 
of Glacial mate the time by the rate of river ero- 
sions, which we have already found to be 
variable, and not, therefore, wholly reliable. 

For instance, it is evident that the Niagara 
River has cut its present channel since the close 
of the Glacial period, for the old channel, filled 
with glacial drift, may still be discerned, leading 
from near the whirlpool, to a point on the lake 
several miles west of the present river-mouth. 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN 24 1 

The rate of recession of the falls has been vari- 
ously estimated at from one inch to one _ 

J Recession 

foot per annum. By the latter estimate of Niagara 
the channel, now six miles long, would 
be carved out in thirty-one thousand years. Ac- 
cording to the former, it would require three hun- 
dred and eighty thousand. This gives a wide range 
for differences of opinion. 

Other estimates have been based upon the ac- 
cumulation of deposits in some of the Swiss lakes 
and erosion of river beds, since the disappearance 
of the glaciers from the lowlands of Switzerland. 
But the figures range from eight thousand to one 
hundred thousand years. And M. Quatrefages, 
who quotes these estimates, blandly suggests that 
the truth doubtless lies between these two ex- 
tremes. We reach no safe conclusions from such 
data. They may indicate more or less. 

We shall find the most satisfactory estimates to 
be based upon astronomical science. The ■ ., 

1 Evidence 

relations of the earth and sun undergo from 
periodic changes, due to the precession 
of the equinoxes and variations in the eccentricity 
of the earth's orbit. 

According to Prof. Croll, of Scotland, there was, 
about eighty thousand years ago, a period of in- 
tense cold, when a great part of the northern 
hemisphere was shrouded in ice. This was the era 



242 THE CREATION. 

known in Geology as the Glacial period.* And 
this gives us the most definite clue to the an- 
tiquity of man. If we suppose the glaciers to 
have been at their height eighty thousand years 
ago, the date of their disappearance must have 
been some thousands of years later, for great 
depths of ice do not fade away in a night, nor, if 
we may trust recent observation, in many centuries. 

But we are content to leave the matter here. 

Man may have been upon the earth, if the as- 
sumed data of the glaciers is correct, 

Antiquity . . _^ 

of man. sixty or seventy thousand years. But 
there is no sufficient evidence that he 
lived before the ice cap had receded from the 
region in which his earliest remains are found. 

* We have purposely avoided all reference to any other than 
the one ice period. There may have been many in the course of 
the earth's history ; but it is with the last only that we have to do. 



XII. 



Remains of Ancient 
Civilization. 



XII. 

REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION IN 
NORTH AMERICA. 

When, on an October morning in 1492, an 
adventurous mariner looked out from his „. 

Discovery- 
gallant little ship, upon the shores of of 

this western world, he supposed it to be 
none other than the eastern border of the older 
continent. And the people he called Indians, be- 
cause he supposed them to be one with the in- 
habitants with which Europe had been long famil- 
iar in Southern Asia. But when, nineteen years 
later, Balboa, looking from the heights of the 
Isthmus of Darien, discovered a vast ocean ex- 
tending far to the north and the south and the 
west, it first became apparent that America was a 
separate continent. And the people, on further in- 
vestigation, were pronounced a distinct race or di- 
vision of the human family. 

This at once raised the question whence they 
came? 



246 THE CREATION. 

The generally received opinion that the human 
family descended from a single pair, found a new 
complication in this people, so far separated by 
wide reaches of ocean from the. home of the in- 
fant race. 

Of the various theories advanced, that their 
W h progenitors had crossed Behring's Straits 

came the from the dreary regions of Siberia, in 
search of a more genial clime ; that they 
had drifted unwittingly in Chinese junks upon this 
fair land; that they were degenerate offspring of 
the Norsemen, who, centuries before, peopled the 
shores of Greenland, none were entirely satisfac- 
tory, for neither of them was capable of proof. 
Moreover, it afterward appeared that the Indian in 
different sections of America corresponded to the 
real or fancied types of nearly all the races, so 
that all the theories practically failed. 

It is not our purpose now to inquire which of 
these theories is most plausible, nor to attempt to 
settle the question as to how long a time the 
Indian occupied the soil of America before the 
voyage of the valiant Genoese in 1492. 

For while perplexed with this problem we en- 
counter another still more mysterious and remote, 
and having in it, therefore, more of curious interest, 
if not the promise of more satisfactory results. 

It concerns a race that perished here when the 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 2Atf 

Indian came, or possibly long before. A race 
whose mysterious footprints are not hard 
to trace or difficult of interpretation. raCGt 
And yet a race that long baffled con- 
jecture and almost defied investigation. But we 
have one or two clues with which to begin. 

The favorite method of preserving the memory 
of great men and great events, in all 

. , , r L Monumental 

times, has been by means of monuments. reC0 rds 
And the mightiest structures of the 
world are those erected in memory of the dead, or 
of events in which human lives were given as the 
price of conquest or victory. Homer recognizes 
this general truth, when in his stately verse he 
makes the valiant Trojan say of his heroic enemy, 

" The long-haired Greek 
To him upon the shores of Hellespont, 
A mound shall heap ! that those in after times 
Who sail along the darksome sea shall say, 
This is the monument of one long since 
Borne to his grave, by mighty Hector slain." 

The pyramids of Egypt were long considered 
but kingly monuments ; and if, as now appears, 
they were built for other uses also, we can only 
say they served a double purpose, whereof the 
former was not the least. The practice of building 
monuments obtained among the early peoples of 
America no less than with those who built the 



248 THE CREATION. 

pyramids, and the custom survives in various 
forms to-day. 

Then, aside from mere memorial structures, the 
more lasting and distinctive works of every people 
and every age become in a sense monumental, 
preserving as they do whatever is peculiar in the 
life and customs of the times they represent. He- 
rodotus assumes a new significance in the light of 
Clark's explorations of the tumuli of Scythia. 
And the romance of Egyptian history becomes 
reality as we thread the corridors of the labyrinth 
and explore the recesses of the pyramids. 

And in Great Britain, within the historic 
period, the early diffusion of Celts and Saxons, 
the intrusions of the Danes, the incursions of the 
Romans, and the visits of Phoenician traders, are 
each and all indicated to the educated eye, by 
walls and roads and heaps of stones, which to the 
unlettered vision may have no significance. 

So, in America, the histories of the earlier ages 
are, alas, unwritten, save as they may be deci- 
phered in fragments of roads and gardens, in 
crumbling walls and mounds, and decaying ruins 
of more elaborate architecture. 

Long before the Indians of the present day, 
there lived, in the interior of North America, a race 
of men who disappeared centuries ago, leaving no 
trace of history or even a name behind. From the 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 249 

western slope of the Alleghanies, through the Ohio 
valley, and even beyond the Mississippi, in rarer in- 
stances, are found the footprints of this mysterious 
race. 

Their monuments — for so, for convenience, we 
shall call the relics of their life — take gen- 
erally the form of mounds. There is no A ™ eri ^ n 

J antiquities. 

such thing as shaft or obelisk among 
them. It may be these people had not the skill 
"to hew the shaft or lay the architrave ;" but it is 
probable, also, that these forms would not have 
served their intended purposes. 

Careful observation enables us to divide these 
structures into three general classes, each 
having reference to some specific use : of 

the first for war or defence, the second 
for sacrifice or worship, and the third for the burial 
of the dead. 

We present a few examples of the first class. 

On the bank of a small stream near Chillicothe, 
Ohio, the summit of a hisdi hill is occu- „ , . 

Defensive 

pied by an irregular work of earth and works 
stone of great extent, closely resembling 
the breastworks used in modern warfare. Its con- 
struction indicates that it was intended for defence, 
while its situation on the brow or summit of a hill, 
flanked by a running stream, peculiarly adapted it for 
such purpose. It is not a wall in the strict sense 



250 THE CREATION. 

of the term, but a line of stones heaped some- 
what indiscriminately together, extending around 
the hill a little below the brow, and rising above 
the general level at the more exposed points. It 
shows forecast and calculation much beyond the 
habit of the modern Indian, and, moreover, indi- 
cates an incredible amount of toilsome labor, to 
which our Indians are specially averse. 

It is unreasonable to suppose this work was un- 
dertaken for other purposes than warfare or defence ; 
first, because of the position chosen, inconvenient 
for any other use ; and second, because of its im- 
mense strength as originally constructed, and the 
evident intention in making most secure the parts 
most liable to attack and most difficult to defend. 

That this line of fortifications has lost its shape, 
on the more abrupt side of the hill, is a natural 
result of the encroachments of time; and that other 
parts are so lost in debris as to be passed over 
without observation, is by no means strange when 
we consider the probable lapse of time since it was 
constructed. But within a very few years, the en- 
tire line could be almost as distinctly traced by a 
little patient examination of the field, as the lines 
that engirt the cities of Richmond and Petersburg 
to-day. This particular enclosure covers an area of 
more than a hundred acres, and may hence have 
served as the refuge or rendezvous of a large tribe. 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 25 I 

It is even conjectured that they cultivated fields for 
sustenance within the enclosure, but that could not 
long have yielded support for any considerable 
number. 

A similar enclosure at Marietta is described as 
having the additional convenience of a covered way 
or passage between parallel walls, leading to the 
Muskingum River near by, that the inmates, in 
case of siege, might supply themselves with water. 
There are other enclosures in Ohio covering a much 
larger extent, and one on the Missouri River, of not 
less than five hundred acres, which was also pro- 
vided with a passage-way leading to the river. 

On the Miami River, near Hamilton, Ohio, is 
one of these works — evidently a fortification — more 
perfect in outline and complete in form, but of less 
size than that described near Chillicothe. It has 
four discernible entrances or gateways, the princi- 
pal one of which is protected by a short curved 
parapet of similar construction. The chief entrance 
to one of these enclosures, in Butler County, is de- 
fended by a series of curved parapets, both within 
and without. These structures are simple earth- 
works, save where stone was abundant, where irreg- 
ular blocks and boulders were heaped somewhat 
rudely together without mortar, and were therefore 
easily displaced. 

In a few instances, toward the Gulf of Mexico, 



252 THE CREATION, 

they had sometimes a facing of sun-dried brick 
(adobe), on which the print of human fingers may 
still be traced. And to the defensive works so con- 
structed was often added a foss or ditch, sometimes 
without, but oftener within, the wall. Many of these 
works are built with considerable mathematical pre- 
cision ; the usual form being the square, the circle, 
or the ellipse. Occasionally, as in Pike County, 
Ohio, there is a square within a circle, though it is 
by no means certain that these were intended for 
purposes of defence. When a tribe or nation is 
driven to the adoption of expedients against an 
actual or prospective foe, immediate utility counts 
for more than precision in form or minuteness of 
detail. Still, the general character of the works is 
the same as those before described. 

Another class of structures closely associated 

with the foregoing, and belonging essen- 
of tially with the defensive works, are called 

" Mounds of Observation," or alarm posts. 
They are small at the base and higher in propor- 
tion, and are found especially in open or level coun- 
tries, or on elevated points adjoining towns or for- 
tified positions. They may have been rendered 
necessary by the inimical relations which always 
subsist between different tribes, even when partially 
civilized, or may have served as a means of safety 
against a common foe. They were used probably 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 253 

both to give notice of approaching danger, and for 
conveying tidings rapidly to remote points by 
means of signals. 

Similar methods are now employed by the In- 
dians to convey tidings from point to 
point, though they avail themselves either 

signals. 

of the open plain, or of slight natural 
elevations, instead of erecting mounds at great cost 
of labor. 

Once when travelling at night in Western Utah, 
we observed, at intervals, fire signals made from vil- 
lage to village along our line of travel. A bright 
blaze suddenly started up, and as suddenly disap- 
peared, like the will o' the wisp, as if some tinder- 
like material had been kindled and immediately 
smothered, and could therefore be easily distin- 
guished from the light of the wigwam or the camp- 
fire of the emigrant. This signal appearing at one 
point was repeated at another, and then another, 
and so on. 

The second general class of these works have 
been styled Sacred enclosures, from their 
apparent use. They are regular in shape, 

* ° L enclosures. 

forming almost a circle, with an opening 
at one side, or sometimes very like a horseshoe, 
with a small mound in the centre, which may have 
served for sacrificial purposes. Unlike the former 
class in situation, they are found on a plain, some- 



254 THE CREATION. 

times in a valley, quite indefensible, and therefore 
utterly unfit for the uses of war. These have been 
thought to resemble the " ring forts" of the Dru- 
ids, or ancient Celtic priests, which Caesar found in 
Briton, and which were their places of augury and 
sacrifice. 

Indeed, it is claimed that the resemblance of 
' , all these works, sacred and defensive, to 

Compared 

to some of the fortifications of Europe in 
remote ages, and the sacrificial enclosures 
of the ancient Celts, is so close as to indicate that 
they are the work of the same people. But this 
resemblance is probably purely accidental, or due to 
the fact that they served like uses in the two cases. 
Especially in the case of defensive works, similar po- 
sitions would naturally be selected. A valley with 
surrounding hills would not be chosen for a forti- 
fication, because of the difficulty of defending it ; 
nor a high hill far from running streams, because 
of the difficulty of supplying it with water. And 
these simple facts would suggest themselves to any 
intelligent people, whether in one age and country 
or another. These considerations, therefore, afford 
no evidence that the people of Europe and those 
of ancient America had any knowledge of or re- 
lation to one another. 

This explanation of the general form of their 
sacred enclosures has been suggested : that the 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 2$$ 

people were worshippers of the sun, and there may 
have been some supposed virtue in con- 
forming their holy places, in shape, to pers 
that of the great luminary whence they 
supposed all life to flow. But this is almost 
purely conjectural. They may have been sun-wor- 
shippers. The other inference does not necessarily 
follow. 

Little as these works are known to Americans 
generally, they are as extensive, at one or two 
points — as at Newark, Ohio, — as those of Stone- 
henge or Carnac, which are among the most mys- 
terious wonders of England and France to-day. 
Built generally of earth, however, they have been 
almost obliterated by the ravages of time, or buried 
beneath the accretions of overlying soils ; great 
forests, the growth of centuries in many cases, 
covering the ground they occupied. 

Before completing the description of the works, 
intended for religious uses, we turn to notice an- 
other class, between which and the sacred works 
it is not always easy to distinguish. 

These are the Sepulchral mounds, in some re- 
spects the most important of all these 
Sepulchral anc j erlt structures, and the ones from 

mounds. 

which the "mound-builder" really takes 
his name ; though the enclosures give us more of 
an insight into his mode of life. 



256 THE CREATION. 

And here we shall find it necessary to make 
a careful distinction between the " mound-builders" 
and the race that came after; a distinction too 
often disregarded in discussing this subject. 

On the borders of Ossipee Lake, New Hamp- 
shire, near St. Regis on the St. Lawrence 
Indian Ri ve r, on the island of Tonawanda in 

mounds. 

Niagara River, and at various points in 
the middle and sea-board States, are heaps of earth 
a few feet in height and a few rods in extent, 
small conical or truncated hillocks which are popu- 
larly known as " Indian mounds." They are arti- 
ficial structures, though at a little distance easily 
mistaken for natural formations ; and on examina- 
tion are found to contain human remains, whence 
they are known to have been burial-places of the 
Indians. Sometimes there is an enclosure of earth- 
work containing several places of sepulture. One 
of these, a few miles east of Buffalo, is said to con- 
tain the remains of Red Jacket, the renowned chief 
of the Iroquois a century ago. 

These, however, are all of comparatively recent 
date, and not the work of the " mound-builders " 
proper. 

According to the elaborate " annals " of the 
French Jesuits, it was the custom among the Hu- 
rons and Iroquois, and perhaps some other tribes, 
to have at stated intervals — once in seven to ten 



REMAIN'S OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 2$? 

years — a " festival of the dead," when the remains 
of such as had died within the period were col- 
lected and given a common burial, and a sort of 
mound erected over them. Such are the works 
just enumerated. But these are the work of the 
Indian race that now inhabits, in roving tribes, out 
western territories, and not of the people with 
whom we have especially to deal. 

These works bear but a crude resemblance to 
those of the " mound-builders," and may _ 

J Distribution 

generally be distinguished by their geo- of 

graphical distribution. The lesser works 
lie chiefly, if not entirely, to the eastward of the 
great lakes and the Alleghany Mountains ; those 
of the " mound-builders," with very rare exceptions, 
lie to the westward of the Alleghanies. 

We now return to a consideration of the sepul- 
chral mounds. 

At Grave Creek, West Virginia, is one of the 
most remarkable of this class. It is sev- 
enty feet in height, and not less than rave *? e 

J ° ' mound 

nine hundred feet in circumference at the 
base. About forty years ago this mound was 
opened and explored. A drift or. tunnel was made 
at the base toward the centre, and a shaft sunk 
from the top to intercept it. About forty feet 
from the summit the workmen came upon a vault 
about eight by twelve feet, and seven feet in 



258 THE CREATION. 

height, formed by supporting timbers at the sides 
and overhead. And at the base of the mound 
was another chamber reached both by the shaft 
from above and the drift from without ; somewhat 
larger than the first, but of similar construction. 
In each of these vaults was found the skeleton of 
a human being, surrounded with such a wealth of 
ornaments, especially the beads and shells prized 
by primitive people for decoration, as to leave 
little doubt that they were the skeletons of chiefs or 
kings. In the lower vault was found also another 
skeleton near the first but without ornament, suggest- 
ing the idea that it may have been an attendant to 
whom it was considered honor enough to be buried 
with the king. . Further examination discovered 
other remains disposed about the tomb a few feet 
from the central figure, and with these was mingled 
charcoal, while the bones showed marks of burning. 

These somewhat startling facts call up vividly 
the account of the burial of the Scythian kings, 
as detailed by the old Greek historian. 

When the king was dead, the body was placed 
in a tomb prepared for the purpose ; one of his 
concubines was strangled and the body burned in 
close proximity to the royal personage ; then the 
cook, cup-bearer, groom, messenger and horse were 
sacrificed immediately around the tomb and the 
whole concealed beneath an imposing mound. 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 259 

We may. not be warranted as yet, perhaps, in 
assuming that such ghastly funeral rites 
prevailed among the ancient peoples of human 
America, but these revelations seem to 
point in that direction. 

Prof. O. C. Marsh, of New Haven, describes a 
mound he explored in 1865, near Newark, _. 

1 J Discoveries 

Ohio, about ten feet high and eighty of 

c . r , . . Prof. Marsh. 

feet in circumference, which was over- 
grown with forest trees, some of them more than 
six feet in diameter. 

The excavation was made from the apex down- 
ward and revealed several series of skeletons at 
different depths below the surface. First were the 
remains of a child with a string of copper beads 
about the neck. About one foot below were two 
skeletons, a male and a female, carefully enclosed 
in layers of bark, above which were charred rem- 
nants of other skeletons which suggested the pos- 
sibility that the latter had been sacrificed, made 
a burnt offering, in honor of the others. At a 
greater depth were found still other remains, gen- 
erally much decayed, which seems to indicate that 
a single structure was made to answer the pur- 
pose of several successive burials. In this mound 
were found several hatchets of hematite and green- 
stone, a flint chisel, needles made from the small 
bones in a deer's foot, a few bits of pottery and 



26o 



THE CREATION. 



bones of animals. Other mounds of this class on 
being opened disclosed similar contents, so that 
further descriptions of them are unnecessary. 

Some of these mounds have been opened in 
intrusion more recent times, and. used as burial- 

of places by the Indians. It is even con- 
jectured that the Indian cemeteries de- 
scribed in Western New York were originally the 
work of the " mound-builder," afterward appropriated 
by the Indians. But these intrusions upon the 
sanctity of the ancient sepulchre are easily de- 
tected, as the regular strata so carefully laid by 
the original builders are disturbed and the sym- 
metry of the structure therefore impaired. 

There is another class of these works, known as 
Temple mounds. They have the form of 
moundl a truncated pyramid, and are supposed 
to have served as foundations for tem- 
ples, which being built of wood or other perisha- 
ble material have utterly disappeared. 

Chief among these is, or was, the great mound 
at Cahokia, Illinois, ninety feet in height, with a 
rectangular base five hundred by seven hundred 
feet. There was a broad terrace reached by a 
graded way on one side, and the summit of the 
mound was two hundred by four hundred and fifty 
feet. Mr. Foster, in his prehistoric races, speaking 
of this mound, gives his imagination wings as fol- 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 2-6l 

lows : " It is probable that upon this platform was 
reared a capacious temple, within whose walls the 
high priests gathered from different quarters at 
stated seasons, celebrating their mystic rites, while 
the swarming multitude below looked up with 
mute adoration." The suggestion is taken from 
the similarity of these mounds to the bases of re- 
ligious edifices in Mexico and Yucatan. There are 
smaller structures of the same class as the Cahokia 
mound in various parts of the country, and sup- 
posed to have served the same purposes. 

There are yet other classes of mounds to which 
no specific use can be assigned. They 
seem to represent some fantastic conceit, m0 unds 
since they take the forms of animals — 
the fox, the bear, the turtle with tail of extraor- 
dinary length, or buffaloes in procession. These 
are especially numerous in Wisconsin ; one on Fox 
River represents the outlines of a bird ; one near 
Baraboo takes the form of a man ; one in Mis- 
sissippi the bust of a woman ; and one elaborate 
structure in Adams County, Ohio, has the shape 
of a serpent with a triple coil at the tail. One 
or two have been described bearing some resem- 
blance to the elephant or mastodon. Whether 
these were mere idle conceits ; whether they were 
regarded only as triumphs of art or invention, 
or whether they represented the ideal conceptions 



262 THE CREATION, 

of their religion, as the Gods of the Egyptians 
took the forms of animals and men, is matter as 
yet of pure conjecture. 

Of far more interest, however, than the mounds 
,„ . . themselves, whatever their form, are the 

Works of art 

and contents found in them. These are the 
real memorials of the people, since they 
indicate the degree of civilization they had at- 
tained, by the knowledge of art which they pos- 
sessed. 

Wrought copper is found in considerable quan- 
tities, whence we infer that they understood min- 
ing and had some knowledge of metallurgy ; marine 
shells are also found in some of the mounds far 
in the interior, whence we conclude they had some 
sort of communication, or commercial intercourse 
with the sea. 

They had axes and ornaments of the hardest 
stone, so smoothly and skilfully wrought, we must 
suppose they had some knowledge of the more 
difficult mechanic arts. While their pipes and pot- 
tery were often wrought with such precision, and 
such fidelity to nature in the forms they represent, 
as to entitle them to the name of artists, as well 
as artizans. They spun thread and made woven 
fabrics. 

Several tablets, with mystic engravings have 
been reported from the mounds from time to time ; 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 263 

but their genuineness is doubted. And though the 
horse was probably unknown in America at that 
day, there is evidence that they moved from * place 
to place with considerable facility, and so must 
have had convenient means of transportation. 

Inasmuch as fragments of copper have been 
found in the glacial drift all over the western 
States, south of the Lake Superior region, it was 
long supposed that this may have been the " mound- 
builders" source of supply. Recent investigations, 
however, have led to a different conclusion. 

Mr. Knapp, the Superintendent of the Lake 
Superior mines, in 1848, discovered an _ . 

1 ^ The "mound- 

old shaft twenty-six feet deep, which was builders" 

filled to the depth of about twenty feet m 
with mingled clay and mouldering vegetation. At 
this depth he came upon a mass of copper, of 
about six tons weight, which had been raised five 
feet from its original bed and rested on a frame- 
work of oak timbers. The miners seem to have 
raised it to this height and then abandoned it. 
The wood quickly crumbled on exposure to the 
air, but the earth was so closely packed about the 
mass as to hold it in position after the under sup- 
port was gone. About this was found a number 
of stone hammers, mostly of porphyry, also mauls 
or sledge-hammers, both of stone and copper, with 
copper wedges used probably in moving the heavy 



264 THE CREATION. 

weight upon the wooden supports. Upon the de- 
bris of another shaft in the same vicinity was 
found a tree still growing, which on examination 
proved to be about four hundred years old, while 
the crumbling remains of earlier generations lay 
across the pit. 

Nor were these isolated cases. Wherever the 
mining regions of Lake Superior have been ex- 
plored, either on the islands or on the southern 
shore, are found the traces of this ancient race. 
And as there are no evidences of permanent 
abodes, as in the warmer regions toward the south, 
the inference follows that they visited and worked 
these mines only in the summer, and therefore 
must have had means of going to and fro at least 
with moderate speed. 

It has been stated that in the oil regions of 
Ohio or Pennsylvania, there are wells of 
such remote construction as to warrant 
the belief that they were the work of 
the " mound-builders." We have never been able 
to trace a case of the kind with sufficient certainty 
to warrant an opinion on the subject. If, however, 
they worked our mines and practised our arts so 
long before ourselves, it is by no means impossible 
that they were equally in advance of us in the 
production and use of oil. 

Having now described, with sufficient detail for 



Did they dig 
oil weils ? 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 26$ 

our purpose, the different classes of mounds, with 
the uses they served and the treasures they reveal, 
we pass to the important inquiry — 

How old are these mounds ? 

It is a difficult question, but we have some 
data from which to form an opinion. 

The atmosphere of this country is drier and 
more favorable for the preservation of „ tJ 

L Evidence 

the dead than that of Great Britain. But of 

the remains found in the mounds of this 
country are more decayed than those in the Celtic 
mounds found by Caesar at the time of his inva- 
sion of those islands. So the American mounds 
seem to antedate the Roman conquest of Britain, 
which took place a half century before the birth 
of Christ ; that is, the mounds are hardly less, and 
may be more than two thousand years old. 

This, of course, supposes them to be the work 
of a race long preceding the Indians. But there 
are two or three facts independent of the foregoing 
considerations, that go far to establish this theory : 

1. They were not nomadic tribes. Had they 
been, instead of building fortifications that were to 
stand for ages, they would have moved from place 
to place, as the necessities of the situation required. 

2. They were an agricultural people. For no 
people living in permanent settlements can long 
depend for a living on the precarious returns of 



266 THE CREATION. 

the chase. And even their sepulchral mounds indi- 
cate the established character of their habitations, 
since they must have been long years in building. 

3. There is indisputable evidence that the works 
were not only built but abandoned centuries ago. 
Over the excavated mines of Lake Superior, as 
already stated, were found trees of more than four 
hundred years growth. On the mound at Grave 
Creek were trees nearly seven hundred years old, 
while on one on the Muskingum River was a tree 
presumed to be not less than eight hundred years 
of age. These must all have grown after the 
works were abandoned, to say nothing of the fact 
that the original forest trees are not the first to 
reappear, after being once displaced. 

These considerations carry us back not less than 
a thousand years, and the period may be much 
greater. No definite date can be fixed. 

Who, then, were the u mound-builders?" 

Some will answer, a peculiar race of whom the 
present Indian is the degenerate off- 
theories, spring. Others will say, a band of Az- 
tecs from Mexico, who made incursions 
into these northern latitudes till driven thence by 
other tribes, or who returned at will to their 
former country leaving these traces behind ; and 
others still place them outside the pale of all re- 
corded history. 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 20y 

Neither of these theories seem to be well 
founded. 

To suppose these mound-builders to have been 
the progenitors of the Indians is to place them 
back anywhere from three hundred to five hundred 
years. But the Indians have no record of them ; 
nothing more than a faint tradition, and that ap- 
parently founded on the mounds themselves ; to 
say nothing of the utter dissimilarity between them 
in character, government, habits, and modes of life. 

The fact that no mounds are found on the 
lower river terraces, the last in the series „ 

No mounds 

of terraces formed after the close of the on river 
glacial period, has led some to conclude 
that the mounds were built before the close of the 
terrace epoch. We see no sufficient reason for 
such conclusion. The fact itself, however, is of less 
importance than may at first appear ; for even at 
the present day the lower terraces are subject to 
overflow, and not, therefore, safe for earthworks of 
any kind. Besides, for almost every purpose the 
mounds are supposed to have served, the higher 
ground was better. 

As to the remaining theory, based on similarity of 
arts and wares, that the " mound-builders" „ , . 

Relation 

were descendants of the Aztecs, or possi- to 

bly of the Toltecs, of Central America ; 

or rather that the mounds were the work of one 



268 THE CREATION. 

or the other of these nations out on a sort of holi- 
day excursion, it is sufficient to say that excursion- 
ists do not build elaborate fortifications, much less 
construct defences that will last for centuries, even 
if the exigencies compel them to throw up hasty 
breastworks, as a defence against an unexpected foe. 
Nor does the supposition that they were temporary 
colonies sent out merely for experiment make the 
case more probable. 

Besides, no well authenticated record or inscrip- 
tion of the Toltecs in Nicaragua dates 

Record =» 

of back beyond the sixth or probably the 

Toltecs. , i i a . 

seventh century, and the Aztecs come 
some four hundred years later. In other words, 
trees found still growing on the mounds in Ohio, 
date back even with the earliest known existence 
of the Aztecs in Mexico ; that is, the mounds 
were completed and abandoned before the exist- 
ence of the Aztecs as a nation. 

But if a similarity in art and architecture argues 
a connection between the "mound-builder" and 
these Southern peoples, why not suppose the Az- 
tecs to have descended from the " mound-builders" 
instead of the reverse? Certain it is, that so far as 
we have any data on which to form an opinion, 
the latter were the older or earlier race. 

A consideration of all the facts bearing upon 
the subject lead us to the following hypothesis. 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION 269 

Two thousand years ago, more or less, the in- 
terior of this continent was occupied by 
a lar^e population of semi-civilized men . .. . 

53 r- r hypothesis. 

far surpassing the Indian of a later day. 
Whence they came it is little better than idle, at 
the present stage of investigation, to inquire. That 
is a problem that cannot yet be solved, if it ever 
shall be. After having been long established in 
permanent abodes, they were driven from their 
homes by the incursion of powerful northern or 
eastern tribes, like that of Alaric and his hosts, 
that came down upon Rome fourteen hundred 
years ago, leaving behind in these mounds the 
evidence of their civil condition and modes of life. 
As they withdrew toward the south-west they 
made temporary stands, here and there, and erected 
some of their characteristic works, till, driven thence, 
they crossed the broad reaches of Texas and found 
a retreat in Mexico. And there, under more favor- 
ing circumstances, they developed the type of civ- 
ilization that culminated in the halls and courts of 
Montezuma. 

Our reason for supposing the " mound-builders" 
to so far antedate the Aztecs is, that the latter were 
at the height of their civilization, or perhaps in its 
early decline, when Cortez invaded their country 
in the sixteenth century, while the latest known 
work of the former carries us well back toward 



270 THE CREATION. 

the beginning of the Christian Era, or possibly 
beyond it. 

One more question remains to be considered, 
What finally became of the " mound-builders ? " 

It is unreasonable to suppose such a people 
could have perished utterly, even after the disas- 
ters of the Spanish campaign in Mexico, or that 
they could have been so entirely absorbed by 
other nations as to leave no characteristic traces of 
themselves. 

From the reports of explorers and surveying 
parties, we have become somewhat familiar in re- 
cent years with what are known as the Pueblo 
Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, and also to 
a limited extent with the Cliff-dwellers. This re- 
gion, especially Arizona, is largely a desert country, 
but with frequent oases of considerable extent and 
fertility. It is apparent that the country has un- 
dergone important geologic and perhaps climatic 
changes in the past few centuries, by which its 
area of fertile lands has been considerably reduced; 
and this has tended more and more to isolate its 
inhabitants from the outside world; so that for a» 
long period almost nothing was known of them. 
Recently it has come to light, however, that at va- 
rious points in this region are towns or communi- 
ties of people, in many respects unlike both the 
whites and the Indians. They are mild in disposi- 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 27 1 

tion and have some habits of industry. They have 
many of the arts of civilized life, though evidently 
degenerated from what they once were. They 
keep sheep, spin and weave, and clothe themselves, 
in part, in textile fabrics. And they cultivate fields, 
though by rude and comparatively inefficient means. 

Some of them are Pueblo Indians and some 
of them Cliff-dwellers. The former have 
great buildings, large enough to accom- i nc jians 
modate a whole community; sometimes of 
concrete or adobe, and sometimes of stone, where 
that material can be readily obtained. They are 
often several stories in height, each story reced- 
ing from the one next below, giving it much the 
appearance, as Lieutenant Whipple describes it, of 
a huge ant-hill ; which appearance is much height- 
ened by the passing in and out of the busy mul- 
titude. There are no doors or gateways in the 
lower story, the only access being by ladders 
reaching to one of the upper terraces. These 
buildings are all of ancient date. Most of them 
are in ruins, but a few are still kept in a moderate 
state of repair. 

The Cliff-dwellers perch like swallows on sum- 
mits or in niches of the eroded rocks. 
They were, by their own account, driven ciiff-dweiiers. 
to this extremity many years ago, by 
relentless foes who gave them no rest and allowed 



272 THE CREATION. 

them no safe retreat. Their houses, even in these 
precarious positions, are built and furnished with 
moderate skill and comfort, though the access to 
them, sometimes from the summit above and some- 
times from the canyon beneath, is difficult and 
often hazardous. 

The people most remotely and completely sep- 
arated from the rest of the world are 
The Moquis. known as the Moquis, and there are re- 
ported six or seven considerable commu- 
nities of them. There may be more, for the ter- 
ritory is not yet completely explored. Their ex- 
treme isolation from the world, by the desert re- 
gions round about, have shielded them now for 
centuries past, from the assaults of savage tribes 
on the one hand, and the encroachments of mod- 
ern civilization on the other. Of the domestic af- 
fairs of these people, little is known, as they do 
not court investigation. 

Prof. Newberry, of Columbia College, paid them 
a brief visit a few years ago, and gives us some 
interesting facts concerning them. Approaching 
one of their towns, he saw first a group of girls or 
young women tending a flock of sheep, showing 
them to be a pastoral people and suggesting patri- 
archal times. The houses were such as have been 
described. In the morning it is their habit to go 
upon the house-top and do obeisance to the rising 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 2/3 

sun, a remnant certainly, if not a form of worship 
of the sun. After the manner of the ancient 
Greeks, they recognize deities or guardian spirits as 
presiding over fountains and the like. Coming to 
a spring on their journeys, they make an offering 
before they drink. A handful of meal scattered 
about the fountain may serve the purpose. They 
suspend something like a piece of candle-wick 
with one end in the spring, and when the water, 
following the law of capillary attraction, runs up 
the wick, they account it evidence that the spirit 
is drinking, that their offering is accepted and 
they are at liberty to drink. 

Who, now, are these people, and whence came 
they? 

Again we answer for ourselves. 

They are the feeble remnant of the Aztecs — the 
mighty people, mighty at least in num- u 
bers, who under the Montezumas held builders" and 

. i n * r tit • ... the Moquis. 

the vast rich fields of Mexico, till they 
fell before the cupidity of the Spanish conqueror. 
And if the Aztecs were the " mound-builders" and 
the Moquis were the Aztecs, the deduction is a 
plain one, that the Moquis of New Mexico to-day, 
are the remote remnant of the " mound-builders" 
of the Mississippi valley of two thousand years ago. 
We shall be met at this point by some enthusi 
astic archaeologists whose opinion is entitled to re- 



274 THE CREATION. 

spect, with the assumption that there is no similar- 
„ ity between the languages of these two 

Language of J ° ° 

the "mound- races, so remote from one another. But 
they will probably insist on some con- 
nection between the " mound-builders" and the 
Aztecs. 

We reply, that of the language of the " mound- 
builders" we know absolutely nothing. And it is, 
therefore," as impossible to trace any affinity in lan- 
guage between the " mound-builders" and the Az- 
tecs, as between the " mound-builders" and the 
Moquis. But there is a likeness in art and archi- 
tecture, in apparent religion and modes of life, be- 
tween the "mound-builders" and the Aztecs, and 
a still better established likeness between the Az- 
tecs and the Moquis. 

We have little data on which to trace the 
ethnic relations of the " mound-builders." 

In two or three skulls recovered in a sufficient 
state of preservation to be accurately ex- 
amined, is the low forehead and prominent ,? ace 

1 affinities. 

cheek-bone, that suggest the Mongolian 
rather than the Caucasian race, and yet it is not 
established that they belonged to either. Judged by 
these skulls, they were not given to great virtues 
or great vices ; nor were they great inventors, though 
probably clever imitators ; a mild and comparatively 
inoffensive race; capable of efficient service under 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 27$ 

a master mind, but falling an easy prey to a crafty 
and cruel foe. Such a people might be efficient in 
building the Chinese wall, or the Egyptian pyra- 
mids, or the mounds of the great West, but are 
not likely to achieve great success in life. These 
qualities were evident characteristics of the " mound- 
builders." They are historic characteristics of the 
Aztecs ; and from what we have been able to 
learn, are the actual and present characteristics of 
the Moquis. 

This, then, is an epitome of the whole matter. 
The "mound-builders" inhabited the val- „ . 

Epitome 

leys of the Mississippi and its tributaries and 
not less than two thousand years ago. 
They were a peculiar people, unlike the whites and 
unlike the Indians of recent times. They possessed 
a good degree of civilization ; lived in fixed com- 
munities, cultivated fields, and clothed themselves 
in fabrics woven by their own hands. They mod- 
elled images in clay, carved the hardest stone, and 
erected elaborate defences against a foe. They had 
a national religion, built temples and altars, and 
offered sacrifices. They had also a stable govern- 
ment, in which the masses were subordinate to the 
ruling power. 

Driven out at length from their established 
homes, they withdrew toward the south-west, into 
Mexico, and possibly into Nicaragua, where they 



2/6 THE CREATION. 

practiced the same arts as before, their architec- 
ture assuming an improved and more lasting form. 
Finally, overrun and driven again from home, 
they withdrew toward the North, gradually dwind- 
ling in numbers and declining in enterprise by rea- 
son of their multiplied ill-fortunes. And now, in 
the midst of a comparatively desert region are the 
remains of the second empire — the power that after 
the mound-builders held dominion and left traces 
of civilization in North America. 



THE END 



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ESTABLISHED 1836. 



LIBRARY AGENCY 

FOR THE 

ECONOMICAL PURCHASE OF BOOKS 

COLLEGE, SCHOOL AND TOWN LIBRARIES, 

Private Collections, Family Bookshelves. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 
182 Fifth Avenue, New York, 

Still continue to make it a special and important part of their business to 
attend to orders for PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS and INDIVIDUALS who 
desire to have accurate information and suggestions as to the best books and 
the best editions, and to purchase what they need, whether in large collections 
or by single volumes, in the most economical way. 

Orders for American or Foreign Books of every description, whether for 
whole libraries, or for single books, are carefully and promptly executed at 
the above Agency. The experience acquired by thirty-five years' study of 
this specialty on both sides of the Atlantic, will, it is believed, be useful to 
book-buyers with reference to choice of the best books, and the best editions, 
and also with reference to ECONOMY. 

Messrs. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS propose to give personal attention to 
all commissions entrusted to them, and to purchase books on very favorable 
terms for their correspondents. Cash remittances should be made either by 
draft on New York, or by Post-Office orders. Strangers can have parcels, 
large or small, sent by express, payable on delivery. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS will also make purchases at any of the Library 
Auction Sales. At their store will be found specimen volumes of the choicest 
books of the time, which can be examined at leisure. 

Putnam's Library Companion, 

A QUARTERLY SUMMARY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, 

Containing an Analysis of the Best Reading of the last 
Three months. 

A classified record with some explanations, of the recent En- 
glish and American Publications, and a Periodical Supplement to 
THE BEST READING. 

"The Library Companion " is sent free by mail on receipt of 
50 cts. a year. It will be found an invaluable guide to all 
buyers and readers of books. 

"Putnam's Monthly Bulletins" of French and American 
Publications sent by mail paid on receipt of 25 cts. a year, 
each, for postage. 

American and Foreign Catalogues supplied as ordered. 



PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. 

Standard Works of Reference. 

l*UTNAM (George Palmer) The World's Progress. A Diction- 
ary of Dates. Being a Chronological and Alphabetical Record of the 
essential facts in the progress of Society. With Tabular views of Uni- 
versal History, Literary Chronology, Biographical Index, etc., etc. 
From the Creation of the World to August, 1877. By George P 
Putnam. Revised and continued by Frederic Beecher Perkins, 
Octavo, containing about 1,200 pages, half morocco, $700; cloth 

extra, $4 5c 

*** The most comprehensive book ot its size and price in the language. 
"It is absolutey essential to the desk of every merchant, and the table 0/ e*ery 
Student and professional man." — Christian Inquirer. 

14 It is worth ten times its price. * * * It completely supplies my need."— 
S. W. Pikgart, Principal of High School, Lancaster, Pa. 

" A more convenient literary labor-saving machine than this excellent compila- 
tion can scarcely be found in any language." — N. Y. Tribune. 

HAYDN. A Dictionary of Dates, relating te all Ages 
and Nations, for Universal Reference. By Benjamin Vin- 
cent. The new (15th) English edition. With an American Supple- 
ment, containing about 200 additional pages, including American Topics 
and a copious Biographical Index, by G. P. PUTNAM, A. M. Large 
Octavo, 1,000 pages. Cloth $9 00 ; half russia . . . $12 00 

THE BEST READING. A classified bibliography for easy reference. 
Edited by Frederic B. Perkins. Fifteenth edition, revised, enlarged 
and entirely re-written. Continued to August, 1876. Octavo, cloth, 

$1 75 ; paper $1 25' 

11 The best work of the kind we have ever seen." — College Courant. 

" We know of no manual that can take its place as a guide to the selection of a 

library."— .AT. Y. Independent. 

PUTNAM'S LIBRARY COMPANION A quarterly summary, 
giving priced and classified lists of the English and American publica- 
tions of the p&s( '/\iree months, with the addition of brief analyses or 
characterizations of the more important works ; being a quarterly con- 
tinuation of The Best Reading. Published in April, July, October, 

and January. Price to subscribers, socts., a year. Vol. I., boards, socts. 
" We welcome the first number ot this little quarterly. It should prove invaluable 

alike to librarians, to students, and to general readers." — Boston Traveler. 

JUKES (THE) A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and 
Heredity. By R. L. Dugdale. Published for the "Prison As- 
sociation of New York." Octavo, cloth . . . . $1 25 
11 A work that will command the interest of the philanthropist and the social re- 
former, aud deserves the attention of every citizen and taxpayer.''— N. Y. Trilune. 

JERVIS (John B.) Labor and Capital. A complete and compre- 
hensive treatise by the veteran engineer, whose experience of more than 
half a century has given him exceptional opportunities for arriving at a 
practical understanding of the questions now at issue between employers 
and employed. i2mo, cloth f 1 25 

LINDERMAN (Henry R. f Director of the Uni led States Mint) 
Money and Legal Tender in the United States. 12010, 
cloth 



RECENT BOOKS OF TRAVEL 

A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains. By Isabella 
Bird, author of " Six Months in the Sandwich Islands," 
"A Ride of 700 Miles Through Japan." Second edition, 
octavo, illustrated, $1 75. 

" Of the bold dragoons who have recently figured in military life, bewitch- 
ing the world with feats of noble horsemanship, the fair Amazon who ides 
like a Centaur over the roughest passes of the Rocky Mountains will cer- 
tainly bear away the palm. — New York Tribune. 

The Great Fur Land ; or Sketches of Life in the 
Hudson's Bay Territory. By H. M. Robinson. Second 
edition, octavo, illustrated, $1 75. 

" Mr. Robinson's narrative exhibits a freshness and glow of delineation 
founded on a certain novelty of adventure which commands the attention of 
the reader, and makes his story as attractive as a romance." — New York 
Tribune. 

The Round Trip, by way of Panama, through California, 
Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Colorado, with notes on 
Railroads, Commerce, Agriculture, Mining, Scenery, and 
People. By John Codman. i2mo, cloth, $1 50. 

" No work on California has given a larger amount of useful information 
than Captain Codman's, and none has equaled his in raciness and general 
readableness. * * * " — Literary World. 

Roman Days. By Viktor Rydberg, author of 'The 
Last Athenian.' Translated from the Swedish by A. C. Clark, 
with a Biographical Sketch of the Author, by Dr. H. A. W. 
Lindehn. 8vo, cloth extra, with twelve plates, $2 00. 

" The whole work bears the mark of individual and original thought and 
research, and is fresh and rich accordingly, and full of new and interesting 
information. " — Chicago Tt ibune. 

Studies of Paris. By Edmondo de Amicis, author of 
" Constantinople," " Morocco," " Holland," etc. 
i6mo, cloth, $1 25. 

" A marvel of intense, rapid, graphic and poetic description, by one of 
the most brilliant of modern Italian authors. The chapters on Hugo and 
Zola show the same power of description and analysis in dealing with mind 
jnd character." — Christian Register 

G. P. Putnam's Sons, 182 Fifth Ave., New York. 



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